Preamble

The House met at half-past Two o'clock

PRAYERS

[MR. SPEAKER in the Chair]

Oral Answers to Questions — DEFENCE

Trident

Mr. Hoyle: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what will be the effect of President Reagan's current intermediate nuclear forces proposals on the Trident programme.

The Minister of State for the Armed Forces (Mr. John Stanley): None, Sir.

Mr. Hoyle: Does the Minister realise that the Prime Minister's rejection of the Russian proposal for a ban on intermediate range nuclear weapons in Europe is disgraceful? It is a blow to peace. It means that, as usual, the Prime Minster has got it wrong. Will the Minister confirm that the reason for the rejection is to enable the Government to continue their folly of the deployment of Trident in this country?
When the Prime Minister talks of the goal of a nuclear freeze being long term, she is not speaking for Britain. We cannot afford to wait, because every nuclear weapon that is based in Europe brings the danger of nuclear war ever nearer.

Mr. Stanley: The hon. Gentleman has got it comprehensively wrong. The Government remain committed, as do the American Administration, to a zero-zero solution to the INF problem based on a zero-zero which must be expressed in global terms. The possibility of a zero-zero solution based solely on European long-range INF weapons is certainly not satisfactory. The hon. Member seems to forget that SS20s are highly mobile.

Sir Anthony Buck: Does my right hon. Friend agree that if we were to cancel our involvement with Trident it would have a disastrous effect on the various peace initiatives?

Mr. Stanley: I entirely agree with my hon. and learned Friend.

Mr. Strang: Will the Minister acknowledge that what was encouraging in the Gorbachev proposals of 15 January was that, for the first time, he was proposing the removal of all Soviet and American intermediate range missiles from Europe, while allowing France and Britain to retain their existing nulear missiles provided that they did not modernise them? Is it not a scandal that the Government have vetoed that proposal by rejecting out of hand the suggestion that we should not go ahead with Trident?

Mr. Stanley: I entirely disagree with the hon. Member. There is no possible basis for making prohibition of the modernisation of British and French systems a pre-condition of an INF agreement when the Soviet Union is taking no steps to make prohibition of the modernisation of its strategic forces a pre-conditon of an INF agreement.

Mr. Wilkinson: Does my right hon. Friend agree that if there were to be an agreed reduction in intermediate range nuclear forces, the importance of modern and effective strategic deterrents in France and the United Kingdom would be enhanced in the defence of Europe?

Mr. Stanley: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend.

Mr. Wallace: Is not the Prime Minister's wholly negative response to the initiative—the first constructive, far-reaching initiative to come out of the Soviet Union for almost over a generation — profoundly disappointing? It makes the Government's claim to support multilateral disarmament somewhat threadbare. Are we not approaching the situation where the Government's obsession with Trident will make us losers twice over: first, the extent to which Trident will crowd out other new defence equipment expenditure; and, secondly, the possibility of Trident becoming an effective hurdle to proper disarmament talks at Geneva?

Mr. Stanley: The hon. Gentleman is not correct. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made a thoroughly positive and constructive response in correspondence with Premier Gorbachev. My right hon. Friend is entirely right to rest on the basic principle, which NATO has followed, of a zero-zero global based INF agreement. If the Soviets want a long-range INF agreement, based on equal numbers of like systems, they most certainly can have it. It is for them to accept that fundamentally fair principle in such negotiations.

Mr. Bill Walker: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Trident programme is merely a modernisation and updating of the Polaris programme, which has contributed handsomely to the peace of the West? If Opposition Members do not recognise that, at least the Leader of the Opposition recognises that Rosyth is important to the Trident programme, because he deliberately leaves out any comment about Trident in letters which are critical of the Government's plans as he knows of Trident's importance to Scottish workers.

Mr. Stanley: I am grateful to my hon. Friend. We have noticed a certain inconsistency between what the Leader of the Opposition says in the Devonport area and what he says in the Rosyth area. I agree with my hon. Friend that we are modernising the British strategic deterrent. Many of us find it difficult to understand why the Opposition, having set in hand a major modernisation of our existing deterrent, should not be prepared to accept a continuance of that policy with a successor system.

Mr. Denzil Davies: Is it not a fact that the Prime Minister's rejection—for it was that—of a multilateral attempt to freeze the development of nuclear weapons demonstrates the hollowness of the Government's repeated claim that they believe in multilateral nuclear disarmament? Is not the right hon. Gentleman's determination to go ahead with Trident, despite the fact that it will affect arms talks between the United States and


the Soviet Union and mean cuts in conventional forces, a major stumbling block to any agreement on arms control in Europe?

Mr. Stanley: The right hon. Gentleman is wholly incorrect. My right hon. Friend the Prime Minister has made a positive response in an INF context. It must be fundamental to an INF agreement that we deal with equal numbers of like systems. As for Trident, I do not understand the Opposition Front Bench's stance. It seems that they want to rest on wholly conventional defence. I suppose that means that they are prepared to rest behind American nuclear strategic weapons. If so, why do the Opposition continue to propagate their highly irresponsible policy of kicking the Americans out of their nuclear bases in Britain?

Strategic Defence Programme (Soviet Union)

Mr. Merchant: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what action his Department is taking to draw the attention of the public to the Soviet Union's stategic defence programme.

The Secretary of State for Defence (Mr. George Younger): A paper on this subject was placed in the Library on 26 November 1985, and is made available on request to members of the public. The Government have also published a pamphlet entitled "Outer Space and Defences against Ballistic Missiles", which includes a section describing Soviet ballistic missile defence activities. These publications are kept under review, so that updated information can be issued as necessary.

Mr. Merchant: Does my right hon. Friend agree that more attention should be drawn to the Soviet star wars programme to demonstrate the need for more research into SDI in Britain? Does he further agree that knowledge of Soviet plans would justify in the public mind the need to speed up Britain's SDI programme? Is he aware that delays in SDI contracts have resulted partly in 42 jobs being lost in Newcastle at International Research and Development?

Mr. Younger: I am grateful to and agree with my hon. Friend. Some people's attitude to the balance of these systems seems amazing. The Soviets have been engaged in such activities since the 1960s, and since the early 1980s they have been modernising their anti-ballistic missile system around Moscow.

Mr. Dalyell: Was the Secretary of State consulted about the visit of Mr. Clarance Robinson? Why did he leave the country without seeing—

Mr. Younger: I am sorry, but the hon. Gentleman's last few words were lost in the noise. Could he repeat his question?

Mr. Dalyell: Was the Secretary of State consulted about the visit of Mr. Clarance Robinson, and for what reasons did he go back to the United States without having talked to British industry?

Mr. Younger: I was not consulted about the visit of Mr. Clarance Robinson. It was therefore entirely up to him whether he came or went.

Land Rover

Mr. John Mark Taylor: asked the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement about

purchases by his Department of military equipment from Land Rover and about exports by Land Rover for military applications.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Defence Procurement (Mr. John Lee): Land Rover is a major supplier of vehicles to the services. Current Ministry of Defence orders on the company are for 4,500 of the new 110 model. A substantial order for military versions of the shorter wheelbase 90 model is expected in the near future. For many years Land Rover has been very successful in exporting its range of vehicles to defence customers. I am confident that the military versions of its latest 90 and 110 models will prove even more attractive than their predecessors in the overseas defence market.

Mr. Taylor: I thank my hon. Friend for that reply. Does he think that any of those exports would be put at risk if the ownership of Land Rover passed out of British hands? For example, has not General Motors said that it would discriminate as to the countries to which it would sell?

Mr. Lee: The future ownership of Land Rover is a matter for the Department of Trade and Industry. The Ministry of Defence has more than 20,000 Land Rovers in service. We look to the company to honour existing and planned orders, to provide adequate customer support in terms of spares and components and also to continue United Kingdom research and development and manufacture.

Mr. McNamara: The House will be interested to hear that the Department of Trade and Industry will decide who will be Britain's main defence suppliers. In view of the figures that the hon. Gentleman has given, would it not be correct and better to keep Land Rover under the control of a British company in Britain, able to meet Britain's defence needs, and not be at the whim of Detroit?

Mr. Lee: We all heard what the hon. Gentleman said. I have nothing to add to the answer that I gave to my hon. Friend.

Mr. Stokes: Does my hon. Friend agree that the purchases by his Department and the military exports of Land Rover would not be affected if part of the company were owned by a foreign concern? Are not many suppliers to the Ministry of Defence also not entirely British?

Mr. Lee: My hon. Friend is right on the latter point. In fact, the Bedford subsidiary of General Motors is a substantial supplier of medium tracks. We have about 21,000 of its medium tracks in our fleet. As a point of interest, in 1985 the Ministry of Defence took 6 per cent. of the total output of Land Rover, Solihull.

North American Air Defence (Command and Control Systems)

Mr. Meadowcroft: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what research he has instituted into the safety and effectiveness of North American air defence command and control systems.

Mr. Stanley: NORAD's safety and effectiveness is a matter for the United States and Canadian Governments. The British Government's involvement is limited to the component of NORAD at RAF Fylingdales.

Mr. Meadowcroft: What evaluation has the Minister made of the work of Mr. Daniel Ford, who made a detailed


investigation of the subject, which was published in the New Yorker and later in a book, and which drew attention to the highly dangerous aspect of relying on apparently sophisticated machinery?

Mr. Stanley: I have not made a study of that publication, but I shall certainly inquire about it. As the hon. Gentleman well knows, NORAD is an early warning system which has been in existence over the lifetime of successive Governments. I am sure that if the hon. Gentleman had any anxiety about safety he would have pursued that with the leader of his party during the currency of the Lib-Lab pact.

Mr. Wilkinson: In the course of Ministry of Defence research into the effectiveness of North American air defence command, will my right hon. Friend study the key role played by the National Guard and the United States Air Force reserve squadrons which constitute well over half of the front line and operate highly effectively?

Mr. Stanley: I am aware of the point that my hon. Friend makes. Undoubtedly, in the North American and United States context a very important role is played by the National Guard in the air defence of North America. As the hon. Gentleman knows, in the context of the RAF Reserve, we have been trying to make increased use of our own reservists and volunteers for air defence purposes.

Mr. Corbyn: In the context of the safety of American air defence, will the Minister tell us whether he is satisfied with the safety of the 16 cruise missiles which are currently circulating on Salisbury plain and the 45 support vehicles which are associated with them? Will he tell us if all those 60 missiles are live and what would be the number of people killed as a result of an attack on those missiles by anybody else?

Mr. Stanley: We are satisfied with their safety. As we have said to the House on many occasions, no live missiles are used during training exercises.

Defence Programme (Costings)

Mr. James Lamond: asked the Secretary of State for Defence when he expects to conclude his long-term costing of the defence programme.

Mr. Allen McKay: asked the Secretary of State for Defence if he will make a statement on the long-term costings of the defence programme.

Mr. Younger: In the normal way I shall be considering the long-term costing over the next few months.

Mr. Lamond: As the Secretary of State is obviously having some trouble finding the money to finance even the conventional defence of this country, should he not have been exerting a little more pressure on the Prime Minister so that she would not give such a strident reply to the Soviet Union when it made a proposal which would have enabled us to abandon Trident and save £10,000 million by doing so?

Mr. Younger: I do not agree with the hon. Gentleman. I thoroughly support my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister's constructive response to Mr. Gorbachev. The long-term costing takes place every year.

Mr. McKay: Does the Secretary of State accept that a close analysis of the long-term costing would show that

the cost of Trident is such that we shall finish up with the most expensive defence force in the whole of Europe, but probably the worst equipped and trained conventional forces?

Mr. Younger: I disagree with the hon. Gentleman. As he probably knows, there is a question down later on the Order Paper about the latest costing of Trident. In general, it takes on average only 3 per cent. of the defence budget, and by no stretch of the imagination could it be said to be a major inroad into the conventional programme.

Mr. Latham: Will my right hon. Friend tell Lord Trefgarne to keep his hands off RAF North Luffenham in my constituency? If my noble Friend carries on talking about this, while today's question might be a Sidewinder near him, the next one will be effectively aimed.

Mr. Younger: I appreciate my hon. Friend's great concern about the RAF station in his constituency. My noble Friend will be looking at this matter closely.

Mr. Favell: If, as we all hope, the GEC system for Nimrod is perfected, will the Exchequer be rewarded for its investment if subsequently the system is sold to Lockheed?

Mr. Younger: That is another question, but I can say that if the Nimrod system, as it has been designed, is accepted, it will be against competition from other possible suppliers and will give the best possible value for money.

Mr. Cartwright: What effects will the coinciding of the Tornado programme with the first years of the Trident programme have on the planned re-equipment of the British Army of the Rhine, given the 7 per cent. real terms cuts in defence spending after the current year? Is it not a fact that any incoming Government after the next general election will have to undertake a major defence programme?

Mr. Younger: That is not the case. Every year there is a long-term costings review, and this year will be no exception. Defence expenditure in real terms is between 20 and 30 per cent. above what it was in 1979. Therefore, the position is better than it was when the Government came to power.

Mr. Bill Walker: Does my right hon. Friend agree that in peacetime there has never been a period during which long-term defence expenditure has not been looked at in depth, so that there is nothing new or novel in what is happening now?

Mr. Younger: My hon. Friend is right. There has to be a continuing look at all the plans for defence expenditure if proper value is to be got for money. That is the principal objective in my Department.

Mr. Denzil Davies: Will the Secretary of State confirm that the defence White Paper for the next financial year is not likely to appear much before the end of May? If so, does it not follow that the House will not be able to debate it until at least three months of the next financial year, to which the White Paper relates, have gone by?

Mr. Younger: No final decision has yet been taken as to the precise date of publication of the defence White Paper this year. However, I can tell the right hon. Gentleman that it will not ve very different from the date on which it was published last year.

Strategic Defence Initiative

Mr. Livsey: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what is the number of orders to date won by United Kingdom firms to participate in the strategic defence initiative research and development programme.

The Minister of State for Defence Procurement (Mr. Norman Lamont): Seven contracts have so far been publicly announced by British companies for participation in the United States SDI research programme.

Mr. Livsey: Will the Minister comment on the fact that there are difficulties in negotiations between West Germany and America on the number of contracts being secured, and the fact that the former Secretary of State for Defence promised £1·5 billion of the so-called star wars crock of gold, but it looks now as if there will be only £300 million available out of a total of £26 billion?

Mr. Lamont: On the first part of the hon. Gentleman's question, if I heard the hon. Gentleman aright—I can hardly believe that I did—what happens in Germany is a matter for the German Government.
On the second part of his question, it was made clear that there is no set-aside, but there is a marvellous competitive opportunity for British industry. We are the first Government to sign such an agreement with the United States Government, and it opens up tremendous opportunities for the technology of this country.

Mr. Duffy: The House wants not fine words but evidence from the Minister. Will he confirm that late last year there was pessimism among United Kingdom firms, which was justified in the light of the problems with the Trident programme? Will the hon. Gentleman conduct a survey of firms so that we can have evidence, because the House shares such pessimism?

Mr. Lamont: I see no reason to be pessimistic. The agreement was signed at the beginning of December, and already seven contracts have been signed. They are highly important, and the hon. Gentleman ought to be encouraging British firms to go out and sell their technology in the United States. We have an enormous amount to offer. There is no reason to think that British companies, which lead in defence technology in so many areas, cannot capture a significant part of that market.

Mr. Dickens: Is it not a fact that the SDI programme, whatever the cost and whatever the orders at present, will create thousands of jobs in the United Kingdom? That being so, is it not wrong for the Opposition to attack arrangements which will yield so many jobs for our people?

Mr. Lamont: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. There is, of course, something nonsensical and inconsistent in the Opposition's attitude. They suggest that if there is an agreement with the United States, our scientists will emigrate. Somehow they believe that if there is no agreement, our scientists will stay at home. That is nonsense.

Trident

Dr. Marek: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what recent discussions he has had with the United States Secretary of State for Defence on the Trident programme.

Mr. Stanley: My right hon. Friend will be having his first meetings with the United States Defence Secretary for both bilateral and NATO discussions later this month.

Dr. Marek: Will the Minister make sure, when he has these discussions, that they are concerned solely with helping British technology to remain in Britain, not exporting British technology to be taken over by the Americans? I mean that not in an anti-American way, but in a pro-British way.

Mr. Stanley: My hon. Friend's question arises in connection with the Trident programme. In so far as we can manufacture the main elements of the Trident programme in this country, we are doing so. As the hon. Gentleman knows, over half the procurement of the Trident programme will fall to this country, including much high technology equipment.

Dr. Glyn: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that most of the contracts for the Trident programme have been agreed in substance between the two countries and that the programme will go ahead as it should?

Mr. Stanley: The programme will certainly go ahead as scheduled. We believe that the British people, in their wisdom, will ensure the continuation of a Government committed to maintaining that vital element of our security.

Mr. Canavan: Instead of discussing the Trident programme with representatives of a foreign power, would it not be more appropriate to discuss it with the people of Scotland, where the Government plan to locate the Trident base? If the Minister did that, does he realise that he would find virtually no support for Trident among the Scottish people, with the exception of the Secretary of State, who is out on a limb and completely out of touch with Scottish public opinion on this as on so many other matters?

Mr. Stanley: When it comes to the next election, we will see what view those living in the Rosyth area and in Clydeside take of the Government's defence policies compared with the views expressed by the hon. Gentleman.

NATO (Expenditure)

Mr. David Atkinson: asked the Secretary of State for Defence when he next plans to meet North Atlantic Treaty Organisation counterparts to discuss the defence expenditure of member states.

Mr. Younger: Defence expenditure is the responsibility of national Governments. My NATO colleagues and I will discuss allied defence planning matters at the spring meeting of the Defence Planning Committee.

Mr. Atkinson: Will my right hon. Friend confirm that the majority of NATO member states have failed to honour their 1978 commitments to increase defence expenditures by 3 per cent. in real terms to prevent NATO from falling further behind the Warsaw Pact? How is it planned to hold those member states to account?

Mr. Younger: My hon. Friend is correct in saying that many of our NATO colleagues have not succeeded in fulfilling their commitment to a 3 per cent. real terms increase in defence spending over the past six years. That will certainly be a topic for discussion between my colleagues and I when we next meet. I note what my hon. Friend says.

Mr. Dalyell: Could we be clear? Is the Secretary of State saying that he heard nothing from the British embassy in Washington about the visit of Mr. Clarance Robinson and that Mr. Clarance Robinson never asked for security clearance?

Mr. Speaker: Order. Has this anything to do with NATO?

Mr. Younger: I can confirm that we heard nothing of the visit of that gentleman, but we have asked for a report about it.

Mr. Robert Atkins: Has my right hon. Friend given any consideration to the effects on our NATO colleagues involved with the potential manufacture of the European fighter aircraft if Spain votes to withdraw from NATO and therefore feels constrained to pull out of the European fighter aircraft project?

Mr. Younger: I share my hon. Friend's concern. It will be up to the Spanish people to make the extremely important decision whether to remain within NATO. The question whether Spain would, or would not, continue as a partner in the European fighter aircraft project would have to be addressed if the vote this week were to go the wrong way.

Vickers Shipbuilding Yards

Mr. Franks: asked the Secretary of State for Defence if he will pay an official visit to Vickers shipbuilding yards.

Mr. Norman Lamont: My right hon. Friend hopes to do so when it can be fitted into his programme.

Mr. Franks: Will my hon. Friend note that, when he and/or my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State pay a visit to the shipyards in Barrow, they can be assured of a warm welcome from a company which has been returned to the private sector, with local management and local employees? Will my hon. Friend note that the welcome will be that much the warmer if my colleagues take the opportunity when they visit to announce the signing of the first contract for Trident submarines?

Mr. Lamont: I note what my hon. Friend says. I know that he very much welcomed the announcement by my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. My hon. Friend may recall the 1974 Labour manifesto, which referred to an irreversible shift of wealth and power to working people. That is what is happening at the Barrow shipyards.

Mr. Campbell-Savours: Would not jobs in Barrow and in Cumbria as a whole have been much better safeguarded if Vickers had been retained in the public sector? What assurances can the hon. Gentleman give the House that thousands of jobs will not be lost in Barrow as a direct result of this privatisation?

Mr. Lamont: It is for the hon. Gentleman to give assurances about jobs, because everyone in Barrow wants to know how the Labour party will maintain employment in Barrow if it is going to cancel Trident and if, at the same time, it says that it will not increase spending on conventional defence.

Mr. O'Neill: Before the hon. Gentleman goes to Barrow will he look again at Friday's statement by the

Secretary of State for Trade and Industry? Will the money which is supposed to be saved by this profit-sharing deal, which is an integral part of the management buy-out, go to the Treasury, or to the Ministry of Defence?

Mr. Lamont: My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State is to answer another written question, when he will amplify what he said in his statement on Friday. As the hon. Gentleman knows, matters relating to the privatisation of Vickers are for the Department of Trade and Industry.

Trident

Mr. Ashdown: asked the Secretary of State for Defence if he is satisfied with the performance to date of the Trident D5 guidance system.

Mr. Norman Lamont: Yes, Sir.

Mr. Ashdown: Will the hon. Gentleman confirm that, in order to achieve the planned accuracy, the Trident D5 warhead will require in-flight mid-course correction from an American satellite? Will the British Trident warhead require a similar facility? What steps has the hon. Gentleman taken to ensure that we shall have independence of operation?

Mr. Lamont: The guidance sub-system in the missile is of United States' design and supply. What the hon. Gentleman has just said, and what he said in his article in The Guardian, which I read carefully, is not correct. All the facilities with respect to information for targeting and to guidance, which are essential to the effective operation of the Trident force, are under our operational control.

Mr. Adley: Is my hon. Friend aware that it was reported that Secretary Weinberger was mystified by the defence policy of the so-called alliance in so far as it relates to Trident? Will my hon. Friend therefore explain to Mr. Weinberger that the reason why the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) trots around after the right hon. Member for Plymouth, Devonport (Dr. Owen) contradicting him is that on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays the alliance's policies follow the Liberal party, on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays they follow the SDP, and on Sunday the defence policy of the alliance is closed?

Mr. Lamont: I note what my hon. Friend said, Today's allegation by the hon. Member for Yeovil (Mr. Ashdown) which is a new twist to the alliance's allegation about Trident, is totally incorrect.

Mr. Carter-Jones: What is the accuracy of the guidance system for cruise and Trident?

Mr. Lamont: Obviously that is not a matter on which I can comment publicly.

Mr. Yeo: asked the Secretary of State for Defence what is the latest estimate of the cost of the Trident missile programme.

Mr. Younger: The Trident programme has been re-costed as part of the annual long-term costing of the defence programme. By convention, that costing assumes exchange rates prevailing last June, which for the dollar gives a rate of £1 equalling $1·28. On that basis, the revised estimate for Trident is £9,869 million at average 1985–86 prices, an increase of £584 million over last year's estimate. Of this increase, £324 million reflects a lower


exchange rate than was assumed last year. The remaining increase of £260 million, or only 2·8 per cent., reflects inflation offest by real cost reductions arising from better definition as the programme progresses. Costs, therefore, are firmly under control and I am glad to say that the programme remains on time for an in-service date of the mid-1990s.
I am making available to the Public Accounts and Defence Committees a more detailed report on the state of the project as a whole; a copy of this report is also being placed in the Library.

Mr. Yeo: I am very grateful to my right hon. Friend for that detailed answer. Although the rise in the pound against the dollar since the date quoted will further reduce the cost of Trident, is he aware that many people remain concerned about the way in which expenditure on Trident may curtail spending on other important defence programmes?

Mr. Younger: I appreciate what my hon. Friend said. As he has indicated, the calculation of costing has been done deliberately by me on exactly the same basis on which, by convention, it is done every year, that is, basing the dollar at the rate it was in June of the previous year. On the weight of the Trident programme as a whole, I can confirm that this leaves it still as averaging only 3 per cent. of the defence programme, or about 6 per cent. of the equipment programme. That is well within our means for such an important system to our defence.

Dr. Owen: Does the Secretary of State not accept that last year when the costing was given it was the Government's intention to keep level funding in the defence budget, but now the increased cost of Trident has to be borne on a defence budget that is being cut by 7 per cent. over the next three years in real terms? Can he really go on claiming that he can support the conventional defence effort that is currently planned?

Mr. Younger: Very much so, particularly as the right hon. Gentleman may notice in the publication that I am putting in the Library that the rate of inflation in the Trident programme this year is very much lower than that of the defence programme as a whole, because of the offset of other savings that we have made. In that way, it is well within what we can afford.

Mr. Marlow: As totally conventional defence, however much it costs, would not in the last resort be able to deter a nuclear power bent on the conquest of the United Kingdom, is not Trident cheap at the price and jolly good value?

Mr. Younger: My hon. Friend is right. There is no other way at a comparable price that we can so secure peace for the future.

Mr. Denzil Davies: Is it not the case that the increased cost of Trident announced today is bound to come out of the budget for conventional defence spending, since, with the conventional defence budget static or falling in real terms and the cost of Trident increasing, there is no other place from which the expenditure on Trident can come? Can the right hon. Gentleman confirm that the American end of the cost is almost totally out of the control of the British Government, because it is dependent on the exchange rate and on the cost charged by American armaments manufacturers?

Mr. Younger: As the right hon. Gentleman will notice, I have deliberately kept the calculation on costing within the normal convention of the exchange rate, which is not, as it happens, altogether favourable to the case I wish to put. I hope he will regard that as fair. On the balance of the programme, the key factor is that the total weight of Trident in the defence budget is very small; for instance, smaller than the Tornado programme. As it secures our safety and defence for the future, I should have thought that most people would regard it as an extremely good bargain.

Mr. Wigley: Does the Secretary of State not accept that to spend money on nuclear weapons to this extent has the effect of squeezing conventional forces out of meaningful existence in many roles? Would it not be much better for Britain to have meaningful conventional defence rather than to go on with the nuclear pretence?

Mr. Younger: With respect, the hon. Gentleman has lost touch with reality. We are looking at a defence budget which is already well over 20 per cent. higher in real terms than it was in 1979 when the Government took office. To talk about that sort of effect on the conventional forces is unrealistic. If any attempt were made to produce a comparable effect for our defences by conventional means only, it would cost vastly more than the Trident programme.

Defence Establishments (Relocation)

Mr. Thurnham: asked the Secretary of State for Defence when he expects to be in a position to put forward specific proposals for moving defence establishments to the north of England; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Lee: This is a matter for continuing review as opportunities arise, such as when major investment is required, but as I said in answer to my hon. Friend on 11 February at column 440 of the Official Report, all proposals will need to stand on their economic and operational merits.

Mr. Thurnham: Will my hon. Friend comment on the imbalance between the north and south of Britain in the number of jobs for service men and civilians, and will he ask our right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer for funds to correct that topsy-turvy imbalance?

Mr. Lee: It is for my hon. Friend to approach the Treasury for extra funds. Seventy per cent. of service personnel and 64 per cent. of civilians whom we employ are based in the south-east and south-west regions combined.

Mr. Beith: As there is little prospect of a defence establishment moving to the north-east of England in the next year or so, will the Minister at least think in terms of our high unemployment level when he considers contracts such as that for an auxiliary oiler replacement vessel, which could well be placed at the Swan Hunter yard on Tyneside?

Mr. Lee: The hon. Gentleman is being clever in moving to a completely different topic. Tenders for the AOR vessels are being evaluated. Tenders are in from Swan Hunter and Harland and Wolff.

Mr. Holt: Will my hon. Friend also take into consideration the fact that ex-service men who have served


their country and enjoy a pension are banned from jobs by Cleveland county council and so their employment prospects are even further reduced? Will he bear that in mind when seeking somewhere to establish a place where ex-service men can work?

Mr. Lee: I am appalled to hear what my hon. Friend says. The behaviour of Cleveland county council sounds appalling.

Nuclear Weapons

Mr. Cohen: asked the Secretary of State for Defence if he will estimate, for the latest date for which figures are available, the total annual costs of all British nuclear weapons currently in deployment.

Mr. Stanley: It is not the practice to make available details of year-by-year expenditure on nuclear weapons. However, estimated expenditure on the nuclear strategic force in 1985–86 is shown in table 2·3 of volume 2 of the "Statement on the Defence Estimates 1985".

Mr. Cohen: Is not that a chronic and enormous waste of money, which would be better spent on social provision and jobs in peaceful manufacture? Will not the billions of pounds spent on Trident be a further appalling imposition, which will not make the British people any safer? Should we not be seriously negotiating on the Gorbachev proposals for nuclear disarmament?

Mr. Stanley: Our expenditure on deterrence is a fraction of what we would have to spend if deterrence broke down.

Mr. Leigh: Is my right hon. Friend aware that spending on nuclear weapons as a proportion of a total defence budget has remained remarkably constant under Labour and Conservative Governments in recent years, never dipping below 1 per cent. or rising above 3 per cent.? Does he agree that if spending on nuclear weapons represents just 2·8 per cent. of our total defence budget, that is a remarkably good investment for the British public to maintain their peace and security?

Mr. Stanley: I entirely agree with my hon. Friend. It is an extremely cost-effective and relatively cheap insurance policy.

Mr. Skinner: How can the Government claim that the money is well spent, especially in view of the announcement of the £9·8 billion that is spent on Trident, when the same Government could not find more than 40p for the old-age pensioners a few days ago and yesterday came to the Dispatch Box and announced that prescription charges will go up by 1,000 per cent.? Do the Government not have a strange language of priorities?

Mr. Stanley: The Government can justify the good sense of the expenditure on the modernisation of our strategic deterrents in exactly the same way as the Government whom the hon. Gentleman supported no doubt justified their expenditure on the modernisation of the Chevaline deterrent.

Trident

Mr. Hirst: asked the Secretary of State for Defence if he will estimate the value of work and jobs which are likely to accrue to Scottish-based contractors and professional firms from the Trident programme; and if he will make a statement.

Mr. Norman Lamont: It is not possible to break down estimates of work and jobs in terms of geographical area, firms or constituencies. However, it is currently predicted that on average 8,500 direct and 6,500 indirect job opportunities will be created throughout the procurement period. The number of jobs will run at 15,000 direct and 12,000 indirect during the peak years.

Mr. Hirst: I am grateful to my hon. Friend for his reply. Can he assure me that, where appropriate professional and contracting expertise exists in Scottish firms, they will at least receive due consideration when tendering?

Mr. Lamont: I can give my hon. Friend that absolute assurance.

Oral Answers to Questions — PRIME MINISTER

Engagements

Mr. Penhaligon: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 11 March.

The Prime Minister (Mrs. Margaret Thatcher): This morning I had meetings with ministerial colleagues and others. In addition to my duties in this House, I shall be having further meetings later today.

Mr. Penhaligon: Now that the Government's efforts to save the tin dealers seems finally to have failed, can my Cornish miners assume that the £50 million offered and now saved can instead be used to save the Cornish tin mines? If the answer to that question is no, can the Prime Minister tell us about the priorities that offer help to the dealers but not to the miners?

The Prime Minister: The £50 million was offered provided that other countries of the 22 agreed with us on a scheme to secure a return to orderly trading in the tin market. They did not, so the £50 million, of course, is withdrawn. With regard to the specific question the hon. Gentleman asks, it is too early to say. Cornish mining companies will be better able to assess their commercial prospects once a market price for tin has been re-established. The Department of Trade and Industry is willing to consider grants towards projects to make the mines competitive in the new market situation. However, no decisions can be taken until a realistic assessment of viability can be made.

Mr. Harris: Can I press my right hon. Friend further on this matter? While I recognise that the Government did take the lead in putting forward the £50 million to try to save the international aspects, can she please treat as a matter of utmost urgency the plight of the Cornish tin mining industry, particularly Geevor mine in my own constituency?

The Prime Minister: I am aware of all the mines and of the importance of securing employment in Cornwall. We shall be in a better position to judge when we know the price of tin, once the markets have reopened. As I indicated, we shall be willing to consider grants towards projects to make the mines competitive in the new market situation.

Mr. Kinnock: May I ask the Prime Minister whether she agrees that her important exchange of letters with Mr. Gorbachev should be published in the public interest, and


may I ask whether she will seek to ensure that that publication can take place? Meanwhile, may I ask her whether she recalls saying in November 1983 that the best Christmas present that President Yuri Andropov could give the West would be to dismantle the SS20 missiles and accept the zero option? Now that General Secretary Gorbachev has publicly made exactly that offer in his 15 January statement, why will she not at least pursue discussions based on the proposal to get SS20s out of Europe altogether?

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman is mistaken in thinking that that is the offer that Mr. Gorbachev has made. He has not made a total zero-zero offer. He has made an offer which would mean that a number of the missiles went to the far east of the country and could, of course, be moved back. That is totally different from a zero-zero option.

Mr. Kinnock: Is the Prime Minister really saying that she has moved the goalposts so far as to inhibit the removal of all intermediate weapons from the east and west of Europe because of the problems relating to Asia? Will she, I repeat, pursue the question of the dismantling of SS20s, so that not only the menace in Europe is removed, but there is a possibility of ensuring that no additional menace arises even in the far east?

The Prime Minister: The right hon. Gentleman should be aware that there is no point in merely moving weapons to a place from which they could be moved back to be a menace to this country. I remind the right hon. Gentleman of what Mr. Andropov said when dealing with certain proposals. He said, "We are not a naive people." What a pity that the right hon. Gentleman does not take that advice to heart.

Mr. Kinnock: On such an important issue that affects the fate of all of us and, indeed, future generations, I hope that the Prime Minister will be a little more rational in her approach and will not simply resort to party political bickering. The right hon. Lady says that she wants to concentrate on achieving realistic, balanced and verifiable arms control measures. Why does she not pursue the possibility of securing a freeze in nuclear arms deployment, since plainly that is the most realistic, the most balanced and the most verifiable of all arms control measures?

The Prime Minister: There are very good reasons why one should not have a freeze. First, one freezes in imbalances. Secondly, unless one modernises the strategic deterrent it soon ceases to be a deterrent. That, presumably, is why the right hon. Gentleman's party modernised the Chevaline.

Mr. Cash: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 11 March.

The Prime Minister: I refer my hon. Friend to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Cash: Does my right hon. Friend agree that the Left-wing councillors in Lambeth and Liverpool deserve what they are getting at the moment for their wilful misconduct towards their ratepayers? Does my right hon. Friend also agree that to see the Leader of the Opposition trying to get off this hook is a pathetic sight? Will she confirm that this Government will maintain the laws on surcharge and disqualification as the only reasonable

remedy for making sure that Left-wing councillors throughout the country do not continue, wantonly and extravagantly, to use ratepayers' money?

The Prime Minister: I agree with my hon. Friend. Local councillors have a duty to set a legal rate by the appropriate time. It is vital to maintain the sanctions of law to ensure that they carry out their duties properly. That we shall continue to do.

Mr. Steel: As the Governments of both the Soviet Union and the United States are keen to secure an arms control agreement in Europe, why does the Prime Minister insist on going ahead with the escalation that is caused by the Trident programme when those Governments are content to leave the British and French deterrents out of the count as things stand at present? Does the Prime Minister not accept that the Trident missile is becoming a two-time loser; first, because of its effect upon our defence equipment programme, and, secondly, because it is becoming an obstacle to an arms control agreement?

The Prime Minister: As the right hon. Gentleman is aware, Trident is not an intermediate weapon but a strategic weapon. It is vital that we keep our independent nuclear deterrent, and it is not a deterrent unless it is modernised. Therefore, we shall go ahead with the modernisation.

Mr. Shersby: Will my right hon. Friend take time today to consider abolishing the Property Services Agency and putting the work for which it is responsible out to private enterprise, in the interests of greater efficiency? Is it not a paradox that although the Government are urging the abolition of direct labour departments the Property Services Agency is being retained?

The Prime Minister: Quite a lot of the work that the Property Services Agency manages is already put out to private enterprise. At the moment we have no plans to privatise the entire agency.

Mr. Fisher: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 11 March.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Fisher: Is the Prime Minister aware that if prescription charges had risen in line with the retail prices index since 1979, they would rise in April from 35p to 37p, not from £2 to £2.–20? Does she not understand that this is nothing but a tax on those who are sick?

The Prime Minister: No. The hon. Gentleman is aware of the enormous exemptions from prescription charges. He knows that these will remain and that they will remain the same. Moreover, the proportion of the family practitioners service that is financed by charges is lower now—at under 10 per cent.—than it was 10 or 20 years ago. The income received from charges provides about £500 million for the National Health Service. That is equal to 20,000 doctors, 65,000 nurses or 500,000 operations. Without the charges, what would the hon. Gentleman do about that?

Mr. John Townend: In view of the rise in violent crime and, in particular, the number of appallingly brutal cases of rape, would it not be appropriate for the courts to impose savage sentences as a deterrent? Is it not time that hon. Members re-examined their consciences to see


whether they were right—against the wishes of their constituents--to take away from the courts the right to impose sentences of corporal or capital punishment?

The Prime Minister: As my hon. Friend is aware, the Lord Chief Justice has set out a very clear and firm position for the courts in rape cases, and the sentences which should be imposed. I have no doubt that they will follow that. His guideline judgment was, in general, very well received. As my hon. Friend also knows, legislation restoring capital punishment would have to get through this House and the other place. We have already had one debate on that subject. My hon. Friend knows my views, but it is a matter for the House to decide according to its vote.

Mr. Sheldon: Has the Prime Minister read the third report of the Public Accounts Committee, which clearly shows that the British Telecom issue was hopelessly underpriced? Is she aware that a number of people in the City have made vast sums out of that underpricing? If she must continue the privatisation programme, will she at least compare the method of selling such public assets with the way in which Government stock is sold through the Government Broker, getting a very fine rate by releasing it at suitable intervals, at prime prices?

The Prime Minister: I have not read the report. However, the privatisation of British Telecom was a huge success, and enabled enormous numbers—[Interruption.—of people who worked for British Telecom, as well as small savers, to obtain shares which they would never have obtained under a Labour Government.

Mr. Fairbairn: While the Government are contemplating some considerable alterations to the criminal law of England, will they bear in mind a slightly more modest alteration to the law of England, which is already part of the law of Scotland, and to which objection has never been taken? I refer to the fact that pleas are not taken until after the jury, which is to try the case, is sworn. In that way, the outrage over the Patrick Reilly case would never have arisen.

The Prime Minister: I shall, of course, pass on my hon. and learned Friend's comments to my right hon. Friend the Home Secretary. On that particular case, it is not open to me or to the House to suggest that the defendant was guilty of an offence of which he was acquitted. Obviously I can say nothing more than that.

Mr. Chris Smith: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 11 March.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Smith: If the Prime Minister is so proud of her Government's record on the Health Service

Mr. Dickens: Rightly so.

Mr. Smith: If the Prime Minister is so wrongly proud of her Government's record on the Health Service, can she tell the House and the people of London why St. Thomas' hospital announced last night that it would be able to take only emergency cases from August, why Bloomsbury health authority is having to make major cuts in provision for my constituents and why 221 hospitals have closed in the past five years? Is that not the reality behind the misleading statistics she always uses?

The Prime Minister: On overall expenditure, as the hon. Gentleman is aware, this Government have an excellent record on the Health Service, the best record of any Government since the Health Service began. Being a London Member, the hon. Gentleman is aware that we who represent London constituencies have sometimes seen resources transferred from London to the north to increase facilities there. Does he object to such equality between the north and the south?

Mr. Heathcoat-Amory: Has my right hon. Friend had time to consider the impending request by the European Commission for a £1 billion supplementary budget for 1986? Will she be sure to turn down such a request, as it breaches the financial discipline pledged to this House in return for the increase in VAT contributions?

The Prime Minister: We shall fight it hard, as we usually do. I agree with my hon. Friend that it is outside what we would expect and that we should not be expected to contribute even more to the European Community.

Mr. Ewing: asked the Prime Minister if she will list her official engagements for Tuesday 11 March 1985.

The Prime Minister: I refer the hon. Gentleman to the reply that I gave some moments ago.

Mr. Ewing: Is the Prime Minister aware that over the past few years a great many people on all sides of the print and newspaper industry in Scotland have worked a great many hours to create good trade union-management relations, so that the Scottish newspaper industry has one of the best no strike records in Europe? In view of her readiness to condemn bad union practices, will she now condemn the absolutely suicidal management policies of Robert Maxwell, which have resulted in the removal of the Scottish Daily Record from the news stands today?

The Prime Minister: It is vital that the newspaper industry uses the latest technology. I remember visiting the offices of the Glasgow Herald on the paper's 200th anniversary, where the latest technology was being used without problems. I hope that the same will be true for the Daily Record after negotiations.

Written Answers

Mr. Giles Radice: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. I seek your guidance and protection against what I believe to be a deliberate misuse by the Chief Secretary to the Treasury of the system of written questions and answers to spread inaccurate information about the Labour party's spending proposals and about Labour's education plans, in particular.
In a written answer on 3 March, which appears in column 29 of Hansard, the Chief Secretary gave a calculation of the cost of the Labour party's spending proposals for schools. According to footnotes 17 and 18, he purported to be quoting from a press conference which I had given on 16 April 1985 and which was reported in The Guardian of the following day. I did not make the estimate contained in the Chief Secretary's written answer, nor did The Guardian report me as making that estimate. I should add that the Chief Secretary's estimate was five times greater than the proposals for increased spending which I actually made.
Could you advise me, Mr. Speaker, on how we can prevent the system of written questions and answers from being deliberately misused in this way?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member gave me notice of his intention to raise this matter on a point of order, and this has enabled me to look into it. I have already received a letter from the right hon. Member for Birmingham, Sparkbrook (Mr. Hattersley) on the same subject, and have replied to it. What I wrote then to the right hon. Member I now say to the hon. Member.
The costing of a party's political programme and the accuracy or otherwise of that costing are matters for public debate. As Speaker, I have no place in that. The hon. Member has complained specifically about the Chief Secretary's costing of the official Opposition's proposals being published in Hansard which, he has said, gives authority to much erroneous matter. There are ample precedents for the policies of Opposition parties to be so costed. I can only advise the hon. Gentleman to make use of the ordinary procedures of the House to call Ministers to account.

Mr. Robin Maxwell-Hyslop: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Do I understand from your reply that, although you told the hon. Gentleman clearly that this matter was not a point of order, he insisted on raising it as a point of order?

Mr. Speaker: Not at all. I received a letter from the right hon. Member for Sparkbrook, who has not risen on this point of order.

Mr. Stuart Holland: Accustomed as we are to Tory inflation, in that same parliamentary reply the Chief Secretary to the Treasury inflated the Labour party's commitment to the aid programme by 300 per cent. Surely there must be some redress to correct Hansard and to deny the impression given by the Government that the Labour party's programme is inflationary. We are delighted to increase the aid programme, but not on terms dictated by Ministers.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. We can complete this matter. There are ample parliamentary opportunities to deal with it—for example, during the Consolidated Fund debate later this week. These are not points of order for me.

Mr. Reg Freeson: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Although we accept your ruling about debates and exchanges on the costing of Opposition programmes, can you advise us what we can do, not about the costings as such, but about the publication of facts and figures attributed to documents which do not exist? I refer to item 13 in the answer concerned, in which it is stated, for example, that, according to a document published by the TUC, 125,000 new starts will be made in housing, although that figure does not appear in the document.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. These are not matters for me. I am in no way responsible for the answers that Ministers give.

Mr. Ian Gow: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. Is it not clear that, in so far as my right hon. Friend the Chief Secretary may have sinned, he may have underestimated the cost of the prolifigate policies of the Labour party?

Mr. Robert N. Wareing: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. In view of the fact that the Minister is not accountable for the Labour party's programme, costings or otherwise, was it not an abuse of the House to use the facility of written questions and answers? As for the cost of producing that answer, will the Minister now be surcharged and disqualified?

Mr. Speaker: As I said in my reply to the original point of order, there are ample precedents for Opposition programmes to be costed.

Dr. Oonagh McDonald: May I ask a question to clarify my mind about the nature and implications of your ruling, Mr. Speaker? Does your ruling imply that Ministers may use the columns of Hansard to give information which is known to be misleading, to both Parliament and the public? Is it not the case that written answers have a certain authority and are used by us in the House as the basis for our arguments and debates, as, indeed, they are used outside the House? What are the implications of your ruling?

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Lady is asking me to adjudicate on whether the answer is correct. I have no knowledge of that. I cannot be held responsible, among my many other responsibilities, for answers that are given to questions.

Several Hon. Members: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I will take only two more points of order, one from each side of the House.

Mr. Michael Fallon: Further to that point of order, Mr. Speaker. I wonder, without questioning your judgment, whether you are being sufficiently tolerant to the Opposition. At the time of the last Budget the shadow Chancellor called for an increase in public spending of £5 billion and his colleagues have subsequently called for an increase of £24 billion. Is it not inevitable that the dispute should have spread outside the shadow Cabinet across to these Benches?

Mr. Speaker: That is not a matter for me.

Mr. Willie W. Hamilton: How can you, Mr. Speaker, or anybody else prevent the Government from telling lies?

Mr. Speaker: I will take the hon. Gentleman on a final point of order, but I cannot be held responsible for answers given in written answers to questions.

Mr. Roy Hattersley: I rise, Mr. Speaker, on a point of order to offer some sort of defence for the Chief Secretary. It is only fair to point out that, out of his 28 items, two are accurate—we propose to increase child benefit, and we propose to help the long-term unemployed.

Mr. Tam Dalyell: rose—

Mr. Dennis Skinner: rose—

EUROPEAN COMMUNITY DOCUMENTS

Ordered,
That European Community Document No. 6893/79, a proposal for a Council Directive on the approximation of the laws of the member States relating to self-propelled industrial trucks, be referred to a Standing Committee on European Community Documents.
That European Community Document No. 11387/84, a proposal for a Directive on making specific training for general medical practice mandatory in all member States of the Community, be referred to a Standing Committee on European Community Documents.—[Mr. Archie Hamilton.]

STATUTORY INSTRUMENTS, &c.

Ordered,
That the draft Dental Auxiliaries Regulations 1986 be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.
That the Plant Breeders' Rights (Fees) (Amendment) Regulations 1986 (S.I., 1986, No. 339) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.
That the Seeds (National Lists of Varieties) (Fees) (Amendment) Regulations 1986 (S.I., 1986, No. 338) be referred to a Standing Committee on Statutory Instruments, &amp;c.—[Mr. Archie Hamilton.]

Questions to Ministers

Mr. Tam Dalyell: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. It arises out of defence questions. In your good judgment, Mr. Speaker, you called me twice to ask the same question concerning the visit of a most senior United States official to this country to obtain most sensitive information from British companies in relation to strategic defence initiative research. On the first question the answer from the Ministry of Defence Was, more or less—I do not think I do it an injustice—that it had nothing to do with the visit and that it was not a matter for the Ministry. When, fortunately, you called me a second time to ask the same question, the Secretary of State for Defence said, yes, the Ministry was now asking for a report on the visit of Mr. Clarence Robinson. A very serious issue arises—

Mr. Speaker: Order. It appears to me that this is an extension of Question Time. The hon. Gentleman has put a point of order to me, but I have no knowledge of the gentleman.

Mr. Dalyell: This is a substantial issue. The point of order is whether Ministers should reveal the whole truth in answer to direct questions. For example, was Mr. Kenneth Hambledon sacked—

Mr. Speaker: Order. I do not know Mr. Kenneth Hambledon either. The answers to questions are not a matter for the Chair. The hon. Gentleman must not seek to embroil me in the answers to questions. Points of order must be on matters over which I have authority. I have no authority over whether this gentleman was invited to this country.

Mr. Dalyell: Is it within your recollection, Mr. Speaker, that you said on a previous occasion that you knew nothing of Miss Colette Bowe? Simply because you do not know that Mr. Kenneth Hambledon was sacked and removed as head of the SDI office does not mean that it is something which should not be explained to the House. Otherwise we will go ahead with the militarisation of space without elected Members of Parliament knowing what is going on.

Mr. Speaker: I think that the hon. Gentleman's points would make a very interesting debate under the Consolidated Fund. I will, try to be here then.

Mr. Dennis Skinner: On a point of order—

Mr. Speaker: Is it a point of order on which I can rule?

Mr. Skinner: Yes, it is absolutely genuine. Now that your ruling has been made, Mr. Speaker, about the previous business, which I shall not speak about, as different points of view have been expressed, may I take it that it will now be in order for Labour Members to table questions to the Government asking for costings of the programmes of separate sections of the Tory party, the Liberal programme, the SDP programme, those sewn up between them, and of all other groups in Parliament? If, as you have said, it is in order to do what has already been done, it must be in order for us to expose the SDP, the Liberals and every wing of the Tory party.

Mr. Speaker: That is a hypothetical matter, but if questions are tabled about programmes, and the Government have had them costed, they would be perfectly in order.

Redundant Churches and other Religious Buildings (Amendment)

Mr. Roger Freeman: I beg to move,
That leave be given to bring in a Bill to repeal section 2 of the Redundant Churches and other Religious Buildings Act 1969, to prevent the demolition of redundant Anglican churches without listed building consent.
As the law stands at present, it is possible for an Anglican church which is no longer required for ecclesiastical purposes to be demolished without listed building consent, provided, of course, that the demolition is following a scheme under the Pastoral Measure 1983. The purpose of my Bill is to change this procedure.
The exemption from the need for consent is a privilege that is enjoyed solely by the Church of England. All other church denominations must obtain listed building consent before they may demolish their churches. This is an anomaly that should not be allowed to continue. May I make it plain that my Bill proposes no changes to the procedure in regard to churches that are in use; it is addressed only to churches that have been declared redundant by the church authorities.
In the 1984 report of the Anglican Churches Faculty Jurisdiction Commission entitled "The Continuing Care of Churches and Cathedrals" it is stated:
"it does appear to us that there could be advantage to the Church as a whole if at the final stage after all the possibilities under the Pastoral Measure had been exhausted, and when the Commissioners had decided that there was no alternative but to demolish, the exemption were lifted and the building in question brought under the normal Listed Building Control".
I agree with the commission, and my Bill would implement its conclusions.
Under the present law, an objection to a proposed demolition can be lodged, but the Church Commissioners' statutory obligation to consult relates solely to the advisory board for redundant churches, which is a Church organisation. Therefore, if the Church Commissioners wish to demolish, there is nothing that the secular authorities can do.
The church of Holy Trinity in Rugby was a listed church which was recently demolished. Bowing to opposition to the proposed demolition of that grade I listed building, the Church Commissioners agreed to hold a non-statutory public inquiry. The inspector's report said that the church should not be demolished until all of the possibilities for re-use had been more extensively explored. My right hon. Friend the Member for Henley (Mr. Heseltine), then the Secretary of State for the Environment, went even further and said bluntly that Holy Trinity should not be demolished. Nevertheless, the Church Commissioners decided to ignore the recommendations—the inquiry was non-statutory, after all—and the church was demolished in June 1983.
Other examples of listed Anglican churches demolished include St. Edward Holbeck in Leeds, St. James's in Pentonville, London, and the Church of the Saviour in Bolton. I estimate that since Parliament passed the Redundant Churches and other Religious Buildings Act 1969, some 70 listed Anglican churches have been demolished.
There is a multitude of possibilities for the re-use of redundant churches. The redundant mediaeval churches at Orton and Little Oakley in my constituency of Kettering


are now used as training centres for stonemasons. The church at Newton, also in my constituency, is now used as an educational field centre for the training of schoolchildren. The example that hon. Members are probably most familiar with is the outstanding baroque church of St. John's in Smith Square, which is now a concert hall.
Re-use schemes such as those serve to preserve important church buildings while making them useful for the community. I believe that more churches would be thus treated if listed building consent were required before an Anglican church could be demolished. That is not to say that the statutory system for secular listed building control is perfect, but it has many strengths. Relying upon advocacy and public protest, the secular system allows the local authority, the amenity societies and the general public to challenge in an open inquiry anyone who wishes to demolish a listed building. Naturally, if the case for demolition is weak, the weaknesses will be revealed at the inquiry.
I believe that my Bill need have few, if any, financial implications for the taxpayer or for the Church. Of course, if we are to preserve more churches for the sake of architectural interest, the resources of the redundant churches fund which was set up by the Redundant Churches and other Religious Buildings Act 1969 will have to be increased. I believe that it could be increased through an appeal for public donations and not by an additional burden on the taxpayer, who already pays two thirds of the annual cost of replenishing the redundant churches fund. or, for that matter, by the Church which provides the balance. The redundant churches fund has hardly exploited its ability to raise money by public subscription and donations and should do so in future in order to maintain more redundant churches.
There is no reason today why redundant Anglican churches should continue to be treated differently from any other listed church or listed building because, after all, once redundant, the building is effectively secular. The present exemption from listed building control for redundant Anglican churches must be withdrawn to help to preserve those churches of England which constitute such an important part of our heritage. I believe that my Bill would go some way towards doing that.
My Bill is supported by all the national amenity societies: the Ancient Monuments Society, the Civic Trust, the Victorian Society, the Georgian Group, the Society for the Protection of Ancient Buildings and SAVE Britain's Heritage. It is also supported by the Association of District Councils and the Association of County Councils and by other bodies concerned with the care of churches, including Friends of Friendless Churches, the Royal Town Planning Institute, the Royal Institution of

Chartered Surveyors, the Council for the Care of Churches and the Historic Buildings and Monuments Commission for England.

Mr. Toby Jessel: rose—

Mr. Speaker: Does the hon. Gentleman seek to oppose the motion?

Mr. Jessel: Please. I think that it should be put on record that there are some arguments against the Bill of my hon. Friend the Member for Kettering (Mr. Freeman), although I know that he means well.
In my constituency there is a redundant church, the church of St. Albans at Teddington. If my hon. Friend's Bill were to go on the statute book, the Church of England may be forced to find about £1 million to maintain the fabric of a redundant church for which it has no use when the living church has moved across the road to St. Mary' s, Teddington. St. Mary's is an old and beautiful church with a flourishing congregation.
It does not seem right that the Church of England, which is in an exceptional position because it happens to have an exceptionally large number of churches through its heritage of church buildings—many of which are of architectural interest, but many of which are not—should be forced to provide such large sums instead of being able to devote all of its resources to the purposes of its ministry. Its purpose is not to serve as a public museum organisation, and if society and the community at large want redundant churches to be preserved they should find the resources through their own organisations—Parliament, Government, the ministries and local government—and not expect the Church of England to deplete the funds that might be used for missions, pensions for clergymen's widows and so on.
Therefore, I feel that my hon. Friend's Bill is not entirely reasonable, and I cannot support it.

Question put and agreed to.

Bill ordered to be brought in by Mr. Roger Freeman, Mr. Gerald Bowden, Mr. Andrew Faulds, Mr. Neil Hamilton, Mr. Simon Hughes, Mr. Roy Jenkins, Mr. Robert Rhodes James and Mr. Richard Wainwright.

REDUNDANT CHURCHES AND OTHER RELIGIOUS BUILDINGS (AMENDMENT)

Mr. Roger Freeman accordingly presented a Bill to repeal section 2 of the Redundant Churches and other Religious Buildings Act 1969, to prevent the demolition of redundant Anglican churches without listed building consent: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time upon Friday 18 April and to be printed. [Bill 103.]

European Community Shipping Policy

The Secretary of State for Transport (Mr. Nicholas Ridley): I beg to move,
That this House takes note of European Community Document No. 5635/85, Communication by the Commission to the Council on progress towards a common transport policy in maritime transport; endorses the view that the instruments are necessary; and welcomes the United Kingdom's endeavours to encourage the adoption and implementation of these measures which will provide for a freely competitive shipping policy for the Community and the necessary powers to combat the growth of third country protectionism which damages or threatens to damage Community trade and the trading position of Community fleets.
This debate is both important and opportune. The package of measures attached to the Commission's communication 5635/85 represent the first steps towards a common European shipping policy. I shall be attending a Transport Council in Brussels on Friday to debate these measures and to try to conclude the negotiations on them. The Commission's memorandum covers a great deal of ground and the four draft regulations on countermeasures, freedom to provide services, competition, and unfair pricing practices together provide the essential tools for dealing with some, though not all, of the problems facing our own and other Community fleets.
In opening this debate, I shall concentrate on these four draft regulations, but I recognise that hon. Members will want to range wider than the regulations. The House will want to debate the whole question of the shipping industry, and I do not suggest that that would be out of order. With the leave of the House, therefore, Mr. Speaker, I shall reply both on these regulations and on the wider debate, if I have the good fortune to catch your eye again at the end of the debate.
I am sure that hon. Members will understand that this is not a good time for me to debate the shipping industry's taxation regime. We are only a week away from the Budget, and I am sure that I shall be forgiven if I avoid such matters.
However, before starting on the Community's shipping policy, I must refer to the question of British Ferries Sealink's access to Belgian ports, which has been mentioned in the House on more than one occasion. As this issue has not yet been resolved, my officials yesterday issued letters of consultation about the possible use of section 14 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1974 to restrict the access of the Belgian state ferry company—RMT—to United Kingdom ports. I am sure that this makes it clear how seriously I am taking this problem. I hope that BFS will now very quickly receive approval for the service which it wishes to operate.

Mr. Peter Rees: I apologise to my right hon. Friend for intervening so early in his speech. I welcome the news that a letter of consultation will be issued. May I take it that my right hon. Friend envisages at least the possibility of a comparable restriction on Belgian ferries to that imposed on all British ferries at the port of Zeebrugge to ensure a rough measure of reciprocity unless he receives a favourable reply from the Belgian authorities?

Mr. Ridley: The Merchant Shipping Act 1974 requires me to have a fortnight's consultation and I am embarking on that from today. I very much hope and believe that it

will be possible to settle this matter quickly, and I strongly hope that it will not be necessary to make a restriction. I am sure that the Belgians will feel that it is more opportune that we should come to an agreement amicably and I will try to achieve that.

Mr. Toby Jessel: Is my right hon. Friend aware that the many friends of Belgium in this country will echo his last sentiment and hope that he is successful in his efforts. Is there not, however, a risk that if we ban Belgian ships from ports in this country they will retaliate by banning Townsend Thoresen ships from docking at ports in Belgium?

Mr. Ridley: I regard myself as being as good a friend of Belgium as anybody in the House. I hope and believe that it will now be possible to resolve the matter in a short time.
In Europe, we need to achieve two things. First, we need the Community to set its own house in order and to do away with restrictive laws which deny shipowners from one member state the opportunity to compete with shipowners from other member states on an equal footing. Secondly, the Community needs to arm itself with appropriate powers to deal with problems that arise as a result of protectionism or unfair practices in non-Community states. The draft regulations help a great deal in solving both problems. I shall discuss each in turn.
The first, annex II-1, is a draft regulation which provides for co-ordinated Community action, covering both diplomatic initiatives and counter-measures to deal with moves by third countries to restrict competitive access to ocean trades. The second, annex 11–2, is a draft regulation creating a freedom to provide shipping services to, from, between and within member states. That regulation would open up Community cabotage trades—coastal trades—and deny member states the ability to operate bilateral cargo sharing agreements with third countries and to maintain cargo reservation laws.
The third, annex II-5, is a draft competition regulation that will give effect to the treaty of Rome's competition articles, and will provide the basis on which liner conferences will be exempted from the anti-cartel provisions of the treaty and the conditions which must be complied with if the exemption is to be enjoyed. The fourth, annex 11–6, is a draft regulation providing for the imposition of a Community levy in cases where third country carriers are engaged in unfair pricing practices and thereby doing material damage to Community carriers.
I shall elaborate on each of the regulations.

Mr. Donald Stewart: Is the Secretary of State aware that there is something slightly unrealistic about this debate, and that if he was making his speech in two years' time there might not be any British mercantile marine to discuss? Have the Government addressed themselves to the serious erosion of the British merchant marine which has been going on for the past five years? In two years, we may have nothing to bargain with in the EEC.

Mr. Ridley: I do not think that the right hon. Gentleman heard what I said at the beginning of my speech. I said that I would be happy to respond to wider questions, but the right hon. Gentleman must now address himself to the full regulations which are before the House. The regulations are of material significance, and could greatly benefit the British merchant marine.
First, there is now a broad measure of agreement on the co-ordinated action regulation, with only a few detailed points still to be resolved. One of the points that concerned us originally was that a single member state could prevent action under the regulation if a unanimous decision of the Council was needed in order to instigate the joint action envisaged. However, one of the amendments to the treaty of Rome agreed at the Luxembourg summit last December was that the qualified majority voting procedures should apply to provisions for shipping. Although the summit decisions have still to be formally ratified by Parliaments of all member states, when they are, it will be possible for co-ordinated action under this draft regulation to be decided by qualified majority voting procedures, thus giving more flexibility and reducing the possibility of blocking by one member state
The second regulation is the draft competition regulation—annex 11–5. This has been under negotiation in Brussels for over three years. It is common ground both within the United Kingdom and throughout the Community that a regulation in this area is necessary, if only to resolve the legal uncertainty which currently surrounds international liner shipping, particularly liner conferences. The regulation vitally affects both shipowners and shippers and in recent weeks a number of changes have been negotiated to deal with points raised on both sides. I think that the balance struck between their disparate interests is now about right. We are a major shipping nation and an island that is more dependent on trade than on any other major industrial nation, and I am glad that the regulation upholds the conference system in a competitive environment, while adequately protecting the interests of shippers. There is now a broad measure of agreement on this draft regulation, although, as with the co-ordinated action regulation, there are still a few detailed points outstanding.
The third regulation—annex 11–6—to the memorandum is the unfair pricing practices regulation. Negotiations on this too have gone well. This is the instrument which will enable the Community to deal with the unfair competition and distortions of the market by the Soviet and other state trading shipping lines whose subsidised operations unfairly undercut the rates of the commercial Community lines. This regulation is in fact an anti-dumping regulation.
Incidentally, annexes 11–3 and 11–4—the draft consultation decision and the draft directive on definition of "national shipping line"—need only a brief mention. Although we could support the draft consultation decision as it stands and the idea of a "national line" directive, neither we nor our European colleagues attach the same importance to these instruments as to the four draft regulations. So these two draft instruments are being laid on one side for the time being.
These three regulations are in an advanced state of negotiation. I believe that it will be possible for these to be approved by the Council within the next month or two. We have, however, made it clear to our Community partners that we want to see all four of the regulations brought into force together. This brings me to the fourth—the freedom to provide shipping services. Here negotiations are proving altogether more difficult.
We are particularly anxious to see the cabotage markets of all our European partners opened up to ships of all member states. The United Kingdom cabotage market is already open, but our shipowners have no access to the

considerable trading opportunities along the coastlines of Italy, Greece and the Greek islands. Nor can a British ship delivering goods to Bordeaux and, going into Rotterdam, take on cargo from Bordeaux to Cherbourg en route as a French vessel can. This is a particularly wasteful loss of opportunity. I regret that there is still opposition to the principle of liberalisation of cabotage within the Community, particularly from Greece and Italy.
We have succeeded in coming to an informal bilateral agreement with the Federal Republic of Germany to enable our ships to participate in German cabotage, but we have been unable to interest Greece or France in a similar arrangement. There is also pressure for a long transitional period—as proposed in the Commission's draft—from Spain, Portugal, and France. Some member states are also trying to protect existing unilateral cargo reservation laws and bilateral cargo-sharing agreements. We are trying to get these phased out, or, at the least, to ensure that any that are allowed to continue should be specifically agreed by the Council. These are important issues. It is particularly intolerable that our cabotage should be open to all, whereas half the Community close their cabotage to us.
Soon we will have to decide whether to continue to fight for this regulation against such substantial opposition. We have three options. First, we might succeed in getting the principle of open cabotage and no cargo reservation accepted but with so many derogations that the concession would be worth little to our shipping industry. Second, we could seek a ruling from the European Court of Justice on the principle of closed cabotage and cargo reservation, which seems to us to be in direct conflict with the right of establishment firmly embodied in the treaty. Thirdly, we could abandon the campaign for open trading within Europe and ask Parliament to give us powers to close our own coastline.
We must make our decision against the background that all the member states, including ourselves, want to agree the other three regulations and get this urgently needed Community shipping policy off the ground. There is much of value in those regulations, particularly in the ability they will give the Community to stand together to resist protectionism and unfair practices.

Mr. Bruce Milian: Why do all four regulations have to stand together?

Mr. Ridley: The other nine member states very much want the first three regulations to be adopted.

Mr. Milian: What do we want?

Mr. Ridley: We want all four regulations to be adopted. If we continue to insist on the fourth regulation, we may not get the first three. That is the dilemma.
On the other hand, to depart from the principle that all four measures should be introduced together would in itself be a major shift in our position. The General Council of British Shipping has already said to me, keen though it is on the freedom to provide services regulations, that we should not drag out the negotiations on them indefinitely, thereby losing the advantage of the other three regulations. I shall, of course, consult the council closely in the weeks ahead.
The four regulations are all directed towards ensuring the fullest possible competition on trades within, to and from the Community. In the future, with the regulations in force, we should be in a much stronger position, on a Community-wide basis, to defend our shipping interests.

Mr. Robert Hughes: I was disappointed when the Secretary of State said that he would concentrate on the regulations and then said that he would be glad to respond at the end of his speech to the wider issues which were bound to be canvassed in the debate. That was a negative approach. Instead of asking us for questions to which he could respond, the right hon. Gentleman should have stated the Government's policy on merchant shipping. We could then have decided for ourselves whether that policy was adequate and whether there were deficiencies or gaps. We could have constructively criticised the Government's policies. However, the right hon. Gentleman ducked the issue by saying that he would respond to questions. The truth is that the Secretary of State has no shipping policy. That is why he has left the answers until the end of the debate. He hopes that our constructive debate will give him some clues on how to proceed. The problem is that the shipping policy of the Secretary of State is basically to leave everything to free market forces. The Government do not intervene. That is the same as not having a shipping policy.
As the Secretary of State referred at the beginning of his speech to his action on Sealink, I shall refer to Sealink now rather than later as I had intended. The Secretary of State has said that he has now taken preliminary steps under section 14 of the Merchant Shipping Act 1974 to take reciprocal action against the Belgian state ferry company—RMT—based on the fact that there have been restrictions against our rightful shipping interests. I was astonished to hear the hon. Member for Twickenham (Mr. Jessel) ask whether, if we took this action, there was a danger that the Belgians would reciprocate. It is precisely because the Belgians have taken this action against us that we have taken reciprocal action against them.
Sealink British Ferries got in touch with the Amalgamated Union of Engineering Workers, of which I am a member, and asked the unions to have a discussion with me on the problems faced by Sealink. Effectively, the Belgian port authorities are trying to freeze Sealinkfirst, freezing Sealink out of Ostend and then refusing to give Sealink right of access to Zeebrugge.
I should like to put on record my appreciation to the Secretary of State for his responses both in writing and when I took a deputation of trade unions to see him. I pay tribute to the way in which he has taken the matter extremely seriously. The right hon. Gentleman and his staff in the Department of Transport have done a lot of work trying to resolve this problem without resorting to this action. I think that at times the right hon. Gentleman may have been irritated by the way in which I constantly pressed him to take action under sections 14 and 15 of the Merchant Shipping Act. I think that he is as irritated as I am with the way in which the case which we have been jointly prosecuting has not been helped by Sealink's apparent prevarication about its needs.
I found it difficult to accept that, when the Belgian port authorities asked for an operating plan, Sealink said that it would take between a week and a fortnight to produce such a plan. I began to form the conclusion that Sealink was not serious about serving Zeebrugge. I was so concerned about that possibility that I wrote directly to Mr. Sherwood asking for an assurance that he intended to

maintain passenger services. The Secretary of State had already told me in answer to a private notice question that there was a possibility that Sealink would change its mind. Last week, I wrote again to Mr. Sherwood saying that the threat of redundancies due at the end of this week would have to be withdrawn before we could give any further support to taking reciprocal action.
I am not sure whether the Secretary of State will make use of a section 14 order or of a section 15 order. I think that a section 15 order would allow him to prevent RMT from serving British ports for 90 days without reference to the authority of Parliament. The advantage of using that provision is that we would not have to extend the parliamentary process before the application. I understand that a section 14 order would require parliamentary approval before coming into effect. I hope that the Secretary of State will tell us which order he will use. I would prefer the immediate measure. I normally do not ask for orders to be brought into effect without Parliament first having discussed them but, in these circumstances, it may be necessary to take this action to concentrate the minds of Sealink and of the Belgian port authorities. Hon. Members should remember that 60 per cent. of the port of Zeebrugge is owned by the Belgian Government, which is why we can use sections 14 and 15 of the Merchant Shipping Act.
On Thursday, the Secretary of State will meet the Belgian Minister of Transport. I am not sure whether that will be a wholly convivial occasion or whether some work will be done beforehand. I invite the right hon. Gentleman to raise this issue sharply with the Belgian Minister. The right hon. Gentleman can say without any equivocation that he has the backing of the whole House in taking this action, if necessary.
I hope that it will not be necessary to take this action. I should prefer it if the matter were resolved, if Sealink could start operating its services and if the threat to seafarers' jobs were removed without coercion. If there is coercion, wider co-operation may be made more difficult in the future. I hope that the saga involving Sealink and Belgium which has haunted me for the past three months will soon end.

Mr. Peter Rees: The hon. Gentleman has referred to the way in which Sealink has conducted negotiations. Does the hon. Gentleman recognise that, although the St. David has been switched to the Stranraer route, another ferry, the Votigern, could easily operate in and out of Zeebrugge, apart from any freight services that Sealink operates from Dunkirk?

Mr. Hughes: It is true that Sealink wishes to operate the Vortigern, which is a combined freight and passenger vessel.
I come to the substantive point of the debate. I apologise if I have commented on Sealink for too long. In examining these European Commission documents, we should look at the background. There is no doubt that the background is the disastrous decline in the British shipping fleet. In 1975, just a decade ago, there were 1,833 ships registered in the United Kingdom, representing 32·1 million gross registered tons. By 1980 the total had gone down to 1,358. At the end of 1985 it had reduced to 600. It is estimated by trade union sources that by the end of this year the fleet will have gone down to 300, half its present size. That means that since 1975 there will have been a reduction from 1,833 to 300.
That dire forecast of only 300 ships is not fully accepted by some analysts. However, even the General Council of British Shipping, the organisation representing owners, forecasts the size of the fleet at the end of this year as 400. Whichever figures one accepts—and trade union forecasts have proved extremely reliable in the past—for a maritime nation so dependent on international trade such figures must cause everyone to be concerned. Even the Government, who seem to accept with equanimity the decline in manufacturing industry, must be concerned at the peril which faces us as an island trading nation.
The defence capacity of the nation is severely threatened. The Government could not mount another Falklands campaign with the projected or even the present size of the fleet, not that I want to see another Falklands exercise. Very few hon. Members want that; I do not think that even the Prime Minister wants it. Nevertheless, the fleet has fallen to such a small number that should such a need arise again, there is no possibility of mounting such an exercise. I find it hard to accept that from time to time Government Ministers accuse us of being unpatriotic when, by their actions, they have been much more unpatriotic than we have ever been in anything we have said or done.

Mr. Richard Ottaway: I share the hon. Gentleman's concern about the defence of the nation. No doubt he will be interested to know, despite the Secretary of State's public statements inside and outside the House, that when there was a naval exercise off Norway last week it was necessary to charter Danish vessels to move British troops and stores to Norway. That happened despite the assurances that we could mount another Falklands campaign.

Mr. Hughes: I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman. That disproves the old adage that one should never give way. I was not aware of what the hon. Gentleman has told us; I am grateful to him for drawing it to the attention of the House. That shows that hon. Members in all parts of the House are concerned about the size of the British fleet. The right hon. Member for Taunton (Sir E. du Cann), whom I am glad to see in his place, raised the issue with the Prime Minister on 4 March. He asked:
Will my right hon. Friend look again at the figures for the appalling decline in Britain's merchant fleet? Is she aware that hon. Members in all parts of the House are now desperately concerned about this matter and its implications, both for our defence policy and economically?
He pointed out:
More than 80 per cent. of British trade is now carried in ships with foreign flags.
He asked the Prime Minister to do something about it. The Prime Minister's response was woefully inadequate. Indeed, my hon. Friend the Member for Wigan (Mr. Stott) wrote to her the next day to point out the full facts and to advise her that she was excessively naive. That was not overstressing it.
The other issue that concerns us as much as the economic effect of the fall in fleet capacity is the job losses for seafarers. Many thousands of seafarers have been beached because of the number of ships laid up. The threat to seafarers' jobs is compounded by the growth of the pernicious practice of registering under flags of convenience. When that happens, inevitably there is pressure to reduce manning levels and wages, to reduce or extinguish trade union rights and to replace British crews by Third world crews with much reduced wages and

conditions. I do not know whether the Secretary of State approves of the practice but perhaps we can find a clue to the Government's attitude if we read the Prime Minister's answer on 4 March; I shall quote part of it:
the important thing for the future of our merchant marine is to ensure that British shipping can compete with the fleets of other nations on costs. That is one of the problems."—[Official Report, 4 March 1986; Vol. 93, c. 151–52.]
That says simply that it does not matter under what flag British shipping is registered, what conditions the crews have or whether they have trade union rights; it does not matter whether Third world crews are exploited so long as the merchant fleet can make money. In the Prime Minister's view, that is the beginning and end of the matter.
The Government will claim that many of the problems have arisen because of the recession in world trade. I do not deny that. We cannot consider a merchant shipping policy seriously without accepting that there has been a decline in world trade. The oft-repeated refrain from the Government in reply to charges about their failure to have any economic objective for the protection of any part of British industry is that it is not their fault. Their excuse is that the problem is caused by external forces and that they have had nothing to do with it. They say that they have to sit back passively and accept the position.
One of the major causes of the decline in the British fleet and its aging nature is that the Government have reduced and extinguished tax incentives for the depreciation of write-offs. The fleet of the EEC is also aging; only Italy and Greece have older ships than Britain. The General Council of British Shipping is seeking help from the Government in the Budget. The Secretary of State said that he would not answer any questions about fiscal policy when we are only a week away from the Budget. Nevertheless, I ask him to take seriously the cry for help and to use the new cloak of Cabinet responsibility, which has suddenly returned to the British political scene, to make an input into the Cabinet about assistance for British shipowners.
I want to enter one or two caveats about my support for the British merchant fleet. Any incentive given to British shipowners should be to build new vessels. Shipbuilding is going through a very difficult period. If I may be parochial for a moment, there is a shipyard in my constituency, not a big one in British terms or in world terms. It employs 650 people whereas about a year ago it employed 1,000. It is facing a great threat to its existence directly because of Government policy over privatisation. In their anxiety to privatise profitable yards, the Government said that they would privatise naval yards. Because of that, naval yards can no longer have access to the intervention fund for merchant shipbuilding even if they can get orders. The Minister should take note of that. We have pressed hard to get ships built in Britain. We need a full programme spread over several years.

Mr. Don Dixon: Does my hon. Friend not agree that it should be a condition of any incentive that ships should be built in this country? Should we not take note of what Japanese shipowners have done? No Japanese shipowner has built a ship outside Japan since 1947.

Mr. Hughes: I agree entirely with my hon. Friend. He has anticipated me by about one sentence, but I am none the less grateful for that because it reinforces the point that I was making, which is that we need a full programme,


spread over a number of years, to replace the fleet. But I want to see those ships built in the United Kingdom, not abroad. I want it to be made a condition of any assistance that is given to the building of ships that those ships should be built in Britain.
I know that the Minister will say that to tie aid to British shipyards would be contrary to EEC rules, because that is what he and his predecessors, whether in his Department or the Department of Trade and Industry, have said before. Sometimes I despair of the Government. They are busily playing cricket by the old rules, but we know perfectly well that our European partners in shipbuilding are bypassing them with hidden subsidies in the form of generous tax relief of one kind or another. No Labour Member, and I suspect few Conservative Members, will lend their support to taxpayers' money going to buy ships built abroad.

Dr. M. S. Miller: Is it not also important that ships should be manned by British crews?

Mr. Hughes: If we go on like this, the House may be under some delusion that my hon. Friends have written my speech for me, because that is another point to which I am coming.
I would not lend my support to the case which has been put forward by the General Council of British Shipping that taxpayers' money should be used to buy second-hand ships laid up abroad at distress prices. That is unacceptable. We should also be certain that any tax incentives for shipowners should not only apply to shipbuilding in Britain but should ensure that the ships are crewed by British subjects under proper conditions with full trade union rights and participation.
We need a fully thought-out shipping policy and the EEC regulations go nowhere near to matching that need. The regulations have clearly been under discussion for a long time and the Government, and indeed the Commission, have still not got them right. However, having said that, I had better say—not simply because it will be read in Hansard, but because I believe it—that I am making no criticism of the EEC commissioner who deals with these matters. He was a distinguished Minister in the Department of Industry and in that office did a lot for British shipping. He has a clear concern for shipping matters and for the people who sail our ships, but I know that he and the Commission are under constraints, not the least of which is the Government's approach to the matters.
Annex II-2 clearly states that
Restrictions on freedom to provide sea transport services within the Community shall be abolished by 1 July 1986".
The Minister said that there were a number of different way in which we might proceed. We might proceed down the road laid out in the document, which is that for certain classes of trade there is to be a derogation—a phasing-out for five years. But, more importantly, cabotage shall end 10 years from 1 July 1986. But even that is qualified. Each time we look at the document we see further and further qualifications. If any member state for whom that applied found that it created particular difficulties, the matter might then extend beyond 10 years. In a delightfully elegant and vague phrase, it says that the phasing-out period
shall not apply where its application would cause particular difficulties.

That completely negates the purpose of the regulation. I happen to agree with the Minister on this. There is a case for ending cabotage and there is a case for increasing cabotage, but there is no case for continuing the existing rules and for phasing-out over 10 years because while that is going on our merchant fleet will decline further. We shall still be refused access to those countries which operate cabotage rules and at the end of the 10 years nothing will be left.
Cabotage is necessary and I would much rather go down the road of saying that we should apply cabotage in the United Kingdom. There is no doubt that cabotage is necessary to stabilise the already too narrow base of our fleet. Once it is stabilised we must use cabotage and many other methods to broaden the base of our fleet.
The problem with the regulation—I hope that I have misread it but I suspect that I have not—is that it will make it difficult for us, or indeed any other EC maritime nation not using cabotage, to erect new cabotage rules after 1 July this year. Not only does the regulation make it more difficult for our fleet in the next 10 years, but it removes our right to bring in cabotage rules for our country and that is something that we cannot possibly accept. I should tell the House that the next Labour Government firmly intend to use cabotage for the British fleet.
Annex II-4 seeks to define a national shipping line. As I read it, there are three criteria. Article 1, paragraph 2, says:
(a) the management head office must be situated and the effective control exercised in a Member State;
(b) the executive board must consist of persons the majority of whom are nationals of Member States;
(c) the company shares must effectively be controlled through a majority shareholding by nationals of Member States who have their domicile or registered office in one of the Member States.
That almost reads as though there would be total control within a member state of the EC. But there is nothing in the document so far as I can see about the use of nominee shareholders, which would certainly be a way of getting round paragraph (c). There is nothing at all about a ship being registered in the member state. Therefore, the vessels and the crews will not be subject to EC safety standards. That will not help the EC fleet and it will certainly not help our fleet.
Annex II-6 deals with unfair competition. Under the regulations as they are published, only the shipowner may complain about unfair trading practices. Why should not the trade unions involved in shipping matters be allowed to complain to the Commission about unfair trading practices? After all, they have a much more personal and direct interest in unfair trading practices than the owners.
I want to refer briefly to safety, which is a matter of great importance. The most recent figures show that British ships have serious accident rates. The incidence of fatal accidents for personnel in British ships is 35 times that of manufacturing, six times that of construction, and four times that of coal mining. In other words, there is still a great need for safety on ships, for training, and for care of the people who sail in the ships.
In addition, we must be concerned about the total loss of ships through accidents. From 1970 to 1974, 355 ships were lost in the world. From 1975 to 1979, 391 ships were lost. From 1980 to 1983, 237 ships were lost. That is a serious matter, about which we should be concerned. There is clearly a relationship between the age of the vessels and their loss. In fact, 22 per cent. of vessels lost


were over 25 years old in 1983, but only 5 per cent. were less than five years old. While there is that direct link, that is not the only issue. It is not a simple straightforward matter of the age of the ships and their loss, because old ships are running about the seas perfectly well managed causing no safety hazard, but there is a clear correlation between the way in which ships are managed and the risks which are being taken.
It is a matter of serious concern that the record of losses in world fleets has shown no real improvement in the last 20 years. Given that there has been a massive explosion of technology and of available information and so on, all this must make us wonder what is happening.
This leads us to ask how many ships are being lost because of fraud, how many are being deliberately sunk to get the insurance money from them. I believe that this is causing a great deal of concern not only in this country but throughout the EEC, and I am sure that the Commission is worried. I wish to ask the Government what they are doing about it, what investigations they are undertaking, and what pressure they are applying to ensure that the issue of fraud is taken much more seriously.
One matter not mentioned in the documents which we need to consider seriously is the problem of world-wide services, that is, the issue of ships carrying such large containers that they can undercut prices and sail all over the world carrying container traffic. Two shipping lines are causing concern, Evergreen Shipping, which is sailing out of Taiwan, and United States Lines, sailing out of the United States. There are grounds for at least suspicion that the kind of rates being charged suggest that a very heavy subsidy is being paid on the operations by Taiwan. This needs to be examined closely.
The Minister has said that the regulations deal with the threat from the Russian fleet. He is apparently prepared to act against the Russians and to say openly—I am not sure that he is on firm ground, but there is certainly cause for concern—that the Russians are dumping, but he is not prepared to say that the Taiwanese and the Japanese are dumping in regard to their shipping practices. I think the Minister should look at that closely. He should tell us what he is going to do. He should not rest behind the fact that there exists a series of regulations which it has taken a long time to bring together.
The regulations represent not the maximum but the lowest common denominator of what can be wholly agreed by the member states, even bringing into play the fact that the most recent changes in community law make it possible to decide these things by majority vote instead of unanimously.

Mr. Dixon: With regard to the Japanese, I have a letter from the managing director of Stephenson Clarke Shipping in which he says:
The British Merchant Navy is competitive in crew costs with most Western fleets and the Japanese.

Mr. Hughes: The problem is that different voices say different things. When the National Union of Seamen asks for better pay, it is constantly told that its members are not competitive. I believe that we are competitive and that we give a first-class service.
The Minister and Government believe wholly and solely in the operation of free market forces and are unwilling to act even when the facts of decline are staring them in the face. Despite the work that has gone on in the Commission's deliberations, the documents do not match

up to the full extent of the problems that the EEC fleet has to face, far less our own fleet. What we must and will have is a full policy for shipbuilding to reverse the disastrous decline both in the fleet and in shipbuilding. I wish to goodness that we on the Opposition Benches had the opportunity to put our plans into operation now instead of relying on the present untrustworthy Government.

Sir Edward du Cann: In his interesting opening to the debate, my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State said that it was important and timely. I think that he could have put it more strongly. The subject of the debate is, I think, of the greatest importance to the economic and defence well-being of our nation. The situation we have to face is undeniably critical. But timely the debate certainly is, for it is appropriate that the view of the House should be solicited before my right hon. Friend has his discussions in Brussels, in which we wish him every success. I thought that he was entirely right when he said that it is appropriate that, in the course of the debate, we should discuss the context in which these discussions will be held.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes) said by implication that we should use the occasion to ensure that we develop the House's thinking in relation to policy. I agree with that. I think it appears to many people outside the House, as it does to many of us in the House, that there is a vacuum on policy. It is to that aspect of our affairs that I shall endeavour to direct my remarks.
On more than one occasion I have expressed my deep concern at the decline of British maritime strength. The hon. Member for Aberdeen, North was good enough to quote one example of that, when I put a question to the Prime Minister a week ago. The statistics are well known. The hon. Member for Aberdeen, North gave some of them. In 1975 there were some 1,600 ships of 500 gross tonnage or above on the British register. By 1985 the figure was down to some 600, and now it is probably less. Our merchant fleet in effect is the smallest that it has been this century. That is the situation over which we in this House preside and of which, I believe, we should be ashamed.
We have no distant water trawler fleet. Only 44 per cent. of offshore supply vessels are UK-owned. The number of seafarers, of men employed in the sea trades, continues to fall. It was 140,000 or thereabouts at the outbreak of war, it is 30,000 today, and it will be less tomorrow. Then there is the lack of profitability of British ship-owning companies.
The implications, both economic and from the defence point of view, are serious indeed. As the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North reminded us, 80 per cent. of United Kingdom exports now are carried in non-British ships. There is thus an immense potential for economic and political blackmail.
I believe that the advantages of what is called the cab rank policy—that is, that those in Britain who wish to send goods by sea will get a price advantage if there are ships queueing up for their business—are purely temporary and are likely to be illusory. We have lost some £2 billion per annum in invisible earnings. Not only have we lost much direct employment, but we have lost much more indirect employment in the ship-related industries of


this country: shipbuilding—which hardly exists today—ship repairing, the other marine trades, engineering, technology, finance, insurance and so on.
All this is bad enough—desperate enough, I would say—but when one examines the situation in defence terms, the picture is horrendous. As the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North pointed out, it is indeed doubtful whether we could mount another Falklands operation. We simply do not have the ships now to engage in a local conflict of that sort. It is no good my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister, for whom I have the deepest respect and affection, saying that all is for the best in this best of all possible worlds. It simply is not so. I do not know what advice she is receiving, but, if it is advice which leads her to that conclusion, I can only say that, in my view, it is wrong.
When one examines the situation which might exist in general conflicts, the supply and replenishment of this nation in wartime would be quite impossible. In his deadly intervention, my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Ottaway) made that abundantly clear.
As the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North pointed out, it is a paradox that both the enemies of the free world and the most violent advocates of free trade are making common cause against the interests of this nation. He rightly said that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Transport is proposing action against the one. In my view, however, one cannot have a left without a right. Therefore, it is appropriate that action should be proposed against the other.
The House knows that a parliamentary maritime affairs group has been established on an all-party basis to alert public opinion about this serious matter and to endeavour to propose practical action to remedy it.
What is to be done? I maintain my view that it would be right for the Government to appoint a single Minister to be in charge of maritime affairs. I remember, as do other right hon. and hon. Members, that when Winston Churchill found that it was essential to get aircraft built during the war, he swept away the obstacles in order to get the job done. He appointed Beaverbrook, who was provided with a clear remit and given power. One person was provided with all the necessary authority, which meant that the job got done. The situation is so serious today that a similar dramatic remedy is needed.
There is other action that we can take unilaterally, especially action of a fiscal nature. However, it is an international problem. It involves the changing patterns of world trade and the ambitions of some developing nations that involve them in protectionism. They have national aspirations with which one can sympathise but to which bodies that ought to know better—for example, the United Nations—give too much practical backing. There also is a great deal of economic opportunism. My right hon. Friend the Secretary of State also referred to the attitude of the Soviet Union, which is that maritime transport is a most significant economic and political asset that has to be exploited.
All of this means one simple fact: that, because of an excessive number of ships, with too many ships chasing too few cargoes, there is a real world problem. If it were not for money being too readily made available at the wrong rates of interest to finance shipbuilding, there would probably be no problem at all. It is absolutely clear

that the traditional concept of free and fair competition in world shipbuilding terms is currently at stake. Some would say that it does not exist.
To mitigate that problem and to resolve it, international co-operation is needed. Where better to launch it, one might think, than in the European Community? The European Community is by far the world's largest trading bloc. It generates 25 per cent. of world trade. It has an enormous population of 320 million. Through the ports of the European Community there is handled, by weight, twice the volume of that of the United States and three times the volume of that of Japan. Therefore, it seems to me that the overwhelming issue for all member states of the Community is to ensure that it maintains sufficient maritime strength to prevent the domination of maritime transport in its waters by its competitors' fleets.

Dr. M. S. Miller: Does the right hon. Gentleman accept that Britain's status as a maritime nation even antedates the industrial revolution position occupied by Britain and that if we want to recover some of the aspects of our maritime authority and power the Government should step in and ensure that that happens?

Sir Edward du Cann: I accept both of those points at once and without reservations of any kind.
If the objective of the European Community ought to be to ensure that its maritime strength is maintained, that is not what it is doing. Western Europe's shipping, in terms of gross registered tonnage, has been reduced by approaching one third in the last decade, while ships that are registered under flags of convenience, or in the Pacific basin, or by COMECON continue to increase. It is clear, therefore, that the situaton will not be self-adjusting and that action is urgently needed to reverse the trend of decline.
In this context we have these documents. I say at once that this first attempt to develop a comprehensive Community maritime policy is to be welcomed. As the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North said, it has taken a long time to produce, but, alas, I am sorry to say that, in my opinion, for what it is worth, it is on the whole a disappointment. Its recognition of the dependence of the European Community on maritime transport is a good beginning. I do not deny that the policy contains many useful features, but its failures are more significant: they are these.
What the objectives of that policy should properly be are not defined. As I have tried to show, given the already stated dependence of the European Community on maritime trade, it follows that no important element of the means of conducting that trade should be in the hands of economic or strategic competitors. To put it briefly, I believe that the essential aim of the European Community's policy should therefore be to retain control of its maritime transport system. Nor does it help that the European Community's policy has to be co-ordinated between a number of separate directorates, in just the same way as it falls into the laps of different Ministries in the United Kingdom. I truly believe that it is no blueprint for prompt and effective action to perpetuate diffused responsibilities.
It seems to me that in two significant respects these papers lack a practical approach. The most important immediate objective must surely be to create a business climate in which member states' businesses owning


merchant fleets can operate and prosper, for the reality is that if profits cannot be made by shipowners they will go out of business and stay out of business. That economic fact of life is, apparently, largely unrecognised in Brussels. I hope that my right hon. Friend will ensure that more emphasis is laid upon that fact.
Nor, I believe, are the realities of competing internationally, when costs or taxation levels are different in the European Community from those of our competitors, apparently comprehended. That is another serious weakness in these papers. Indeed, I go further and say that there is a culpable omission. The papers do not deal in any detail with the problem of Government subsidies to the shipbuilding industries—the point that the hon. Member for East Kilbride (Dr. Miller) made in his intervention. That is the root of the problem, but it is not mentioned at all in these papers. My view is that the European Community should make a strong contribution to the debate on this subject and get that debate going on a worldwide basis. I hope that my right hon. Friend will be successful in provoking that debate.
It is right that the papers insist that state aid should not distort competition between Community shipowners, but it is a second serious omission that the papers do not discuss the type of fiscal regime that would enable the European Community's shipping companies to compete on equal terms with companies in other parts of the world. Again, that is a practical matter, to which we should address our minds. As careful students of the European Community and its ways may think, such omissions are, perhaps, not surprising. The treaty of Rome is on the whole an inward-looking domestic document. It follows, perhaps inevitably, that more emphasis is placed in these papers on freedom of movement inside the Community than on wider considerations. I believe that the emphasis in the documents is wholly wrong, and that is why they are so disappointing.
I thought that one of the arguments in favour of Britain joining the Community was that we would be able to bring a new breadth of outlook to its affairs. Indeed, I hope that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will dedicate himself to doing that. There is, after all, so much that the European Community could and should be doing that is constructive. For example, it could create conditions, standards and training that would encourage young people to serve at sea; it could encourage the adoption of better technology aimed at reducing operating costs; it could develop comprehensive traffic management systems to improve standards of safety and navigation; it could take collective measures to reduce pollution and other incidents. Perhaps most importantly, the Community could be directing its actions to areas of international policy where its enormous collective strength as the world's largest trading bloc could ensure the compliance of non-member states and their fleets with fair rules of behaviour, including commercial and Government practices, technical and crew standards and conditions of employment. But alas such things are not mentioned, despite the fact that this is the first definitive document to come out of the Community and that we have waited so long for it.
It is time for an end to rhetoric, generalisations about competition policy and the like. The nation and the Community face a crisis. The position is deteriorating.
Ministers, especially our Ministers with all their experience, have great responsibilities, but they live up to

them. I am sure that it is possible to identify and largely to eliminate the causes that force owners to flag out their ships or to go out of business. Let it be done. I am also sure that it is possible to reduce those high cost elements within our domestic control that prevent European shipowners from competing profitably internationally. Let that be done, too.
We have great strength in the EC—we should use it. I thought that another practical reason for joining the EC was the advantage that we were told combination would bring us—in other words, by joining with other nations the United Kingdom would acquire more influence and benefit. Of course, we know that assurances over EC affairs are often far from the reality. Let hon. Members look at our experience over budgetary controls. I believe that the House has been most grievously misled in this regard. However, that is a matter that we should pursue on other occasions.
Those of us who want to see the Community succeed now that the decision has been taken to sign the treaty of Rome find it worrying that we simply do not go for such potential advantages and seem unwilling to exploit them. As a result, the whole country seems to think that there is nothing but disadvantage to this adventure. That is not, I am sure, what the most passionate advocates of signing the treaty of Rome expected.
Why is there so little argument or pressure to maximise the advantages? There should surely be more. As has been said, in trying to obtain advantage from our membership of the EC no subject is more important than that of cabotage. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Sir D. Price), who is no mean expert on this subject, has been pressing the point for a long time.
Our home waters now stretch from the Baltic to the Aegean. If Turkey joins the EC, the Black sea win also be included. There is a thought. Australia and New Zealand reserve their cabotage. The Latin American free trade area countries reserve their cabotage, and so does the United States of America under the Jones Act of 60 years ago. The latter's waters stretch from Guam in the Pacific to Alaska via Hawaii and the Caribbean. They cover an immense area. I merely say that we should do the same, and thereby provide a home base upon which to build prosperity.
I very much agree with what the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North said and with what I thought my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State was hinting at. If we cannot get a Community policy, we should go it alone. We should refuse to have in our waters the ships of those nations that refuse us access to theirs. It is time that we were a little more selfish in pursuing our own interests, and a little less sympathetic to the other fellow's point of view.
It is surely right to say that if action of a more imaginative kind is not taken by the Community in order to defend its interests, we face the prospect of an EC merchant fleet that will continue to decline. Equally, the prospects for ancillary industries will be bleak. That would be quite unacceptable to me, to most hon. Members, as well as to our nation and the peoples of the Community. We need a much greater sense of urgency and determination than we have so far seen. I hope with all my heart that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State, an old personal friend of mine for whom I have such regard, will set an example. I look to him to provide that determination and urgency. It is all there to win, and the cause should be won.
The way things are going is nothing short of a scandal. We seem wholly to lack the resolution, strength of purpose and idealism to defend the interests of our people. I repeat that that situation is wholly unacceptable to me. I hope with all my heart that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State will change it very much for the better.

Mr. Bruce Millan: I am glad to speak after the right hon. Member for Taunton (Sir E. du Cann) because I agreed with many of his remarks. Indeed, I think that most of them found an echo on the Opposition side of the Chamber.
So far, the debate has been wide ranging, but I wish to make some fairly limited though extremely important points about the regulation on free trade within the Community, which is included in annex II-2. I also wish to set my remarks in the context of the deepening crisis in our shipping industry. The figures are included in the Commission document, although unfortunately they only go as far as 1983. It is clear that, between 1975 and 1983, United Kingdom fleet tonnage fell from 32·18 million tonnes to 18·18 million tonnes. That catastrophic decline is still going on. Although I am not sure of the current figure, it must be nearer 12 million tonnes than 18 million tonnes.
Between 1975 and 1983 there was not a corresponding reduction in the Community's tonnage. It remained virtually the same, dropping from 94 million in 1975 to 93 million in 1983. The reduction in the British fleet was made up by a considerable expansion in Greece's tonnage. Greece is now a member of the Community and is one of the countries that reserves total coastal trade to its own ships.
Thus, the reduction that we have suffered has not been repeated elsewhere in the Community. There has been some decline in other countries, and the position has certainly deteriorated since 1983, but the fact remains that the British fleet declined considerably during that period and is still declining. It causes considerable worry to Members on both Opposition and Government Benches. It has been met with constant complacency on the part of the Government. That complacency was reflected in the attitude of the Secretary of State for Transport in his speech this afternoon. It affects jobs, strategic interests and defence interests, specifically in relation to maritime operations. It also has important implications for the shipbuilding industry, in which I have a strong constituency interest through Govan Shipbuilders, one of the best merchant yards in the United Kingdom but one which is suffering from an appalling lack of orders at present which, if not remedied soon, will mean further redundancies later this year.
There are therefore several aspects to this debate because it goes beyond the shipping industry and involves defence, strategic interests, the future of our shipbuilding industry and the rest.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Harold Walker): Order. I hope that the right hon. Gentleman will not go too far down that road, because shipbuilding is not within the compass of our debate.

Mr. Millan: You will find, Mr. Deputy Speaker, that I do not intend to go down that road at all, even though

practically everyone else has, including the Minister. If I may say so, the right hon. Gentleman made a virtue of it in his opening speech, which I think you, Sir, had the misfortune, or perhaps good fortune, not to hear.
In any case, I want to turn immediately to annex 11–2, the draft regulation on free trade, and to deal particularly with coastal traffic, cabotage and offshore support vessels. The present situation is wholly unsatisfactory because there are no restrictions at all on access to our own coastal trade, whereas a number of Community countries impose restrictions. Some of us have pressed the Government for a very long time now either to impose restrictions on our own coastal trade—a course which I and other Opposition Members favour—or at least to take reciprocal action against those Community countries which prevent us from having access to their coastal traffic. That, of course, has been refused by the Government and, apart from an informal agreement recently reached with Germany, we still have substantial restrictions in Denmark, France, Greece, and Italy.
If this regulation went through, it would make it impossible for any member of the Community to indulge in these cargo reservation practices. That would perhaps be acceptable if something were to happen quickly, but we have the extraordinary situation that the draft regulation not only says that any of these cargo reservation practices in relation to coastal traffic will be phased out only over 10 years; it also states that if, at the end of 10 years, there are particular difficulties the phasing out may take longer, or may never happen.
It is ludicrous for us to accept a regulation of that sort. If all restrictions were to be removed immediately, I could see some justification in the Government looking with some favour on this regulation; but such a transitional arrangement would simply mean that we would continue to give free access to our own traffic to members of the Community and others, while not having the advantage of access to the coastal traffic of other member states. There can be no justification for accepting the regulation as it stands.
Instead of arguing, as the Government have tried to argue for a number of years, for the removal of restrictions by other Common Market countries, it would have been far more sensible for us to impose restrictions here in the United Kingdom. That would have brought them to their senses. It would also have been intrinsically the best policy for this country. It is still the best policy for this country. Therefore, there can be no justification for accepting this draft regulation as it stands, nor do I believe that it will be possible, given the vested interests involved, for us to have the regulation amended satisfactorily.
In an intervention, I asked the Secretary of State why we had to take all these regulations together so that we had to accept the whole package or none of it. I received no satisfactory answer. For the life of me, I do not see why we must adopt that approach. Certain parts of the other regulations are satisfactory. Because of restrictions of time, I do not want to deal with these other regulations, but I do not see why we should have to accept everything as a package. If that is to be the approach of the Government, we must not accept any of the regulations, because this one is so unsatisfactory.
It is unsatisfactory not only as far as cabotage is concerned. The same is true for our offshore support. There has been quite a change of view on the part of that particular bit of the industry which, being part of the


General Council of British Shipping, has until recently, as I understand it, followed the usual line of the GCBS—being in favour of free trade without restrictions, being very unwilling to see action by the British Government to protect British interests, and taking the view that that would be against our interests in the wider field of shipping. That is a view which I have never held, and which I have argued against with the GCBS on different occasions.
The British Offshore Support Vessels Association is now a separate body. It takes the view that offshore support vessels should be completely removed from this regulation. I agree with that. If the regulation has to go ahead at all, offshore support vessels should certainly be removed from it. But again the regulation would simply say that there would be no possibility of the Government taking restrictive action to support our own offshore support vessel industry, one of the few bits of the shipping industry which has been doing relatively well in recent years—although even there some difficulties are being experienced, with boats being laid up.
We have the extraordinary situation, as the BOSVA points out in a recently circulated document, that in the North sea 170 vessels are operating in the United Kingdom sector at present, of which only 111 carry the British flag, about 30 of which are believed to be controlled by foreign operators, mainly Norwegian and American. So, out of 170 vessels, only 81 are genuinely British owned. Of 79 vessels in the Norwegian sector, 78 are Norwegian and only one is not.
I know that there have been discussions between the British and Norwegian Governments about this, and that all sorts of reasons are given for it. The reality is that the Norwegians very sensibly keep their offshore support a Norwegian operation. We ought to do the same. It is ridiculous that we should allow Norwegian vessels to operate freely in our sector of the North Sea when, in practical terms, it has proved impossible for British or any other support vessels to enter the Norwegian sector. The same applies in other areas such as the Dutch sector, although the two important sectors are the British and the Norwegian. Ours is open to everyone and we are paying the penalty. The Norwegian sector is restricted, in practice, to the Norwegian industry.
The British sector is the most important of all. If this regulation goes ahead, any possibility of our protecting it in the future for our own industry will completely disappear. I am delighted that at least one part of the General Council of British Shipping has recognised the need to protect our interests in important areas.
The whole business of free trade in shipping is a myth. If it ever operated, it has certainly not operated for many years now. Successive Governments have tended to say that there must be minimum restrictions on free trade because it is in the interests of British industry, and under the present Government that is almost dogma. In reality, the result has been that most export traffic is carried by non-British ships in new areas of activity, such as the North sea, where we are losing out to foreign competitors. We are being trampled on by other member states, and we are not taking effective retaliatory action.
If the regulations are passed, especially the one to which I specifically referred, far from helping the position as a genuinely active, interventionist Community policy, they will make it even worse and goodness knows, the British shipping industry is already in a critical condition.

Sir David Price: Like the right hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Millan), I have both personal and constituency interests in the fortunes of the British Merchant Navy. As the House knows, it has been in steady decline for the past 10 years, and all hon. Members who have spoken so far have drawn attention to that fact. Like my right hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Sir E. du Cann) and other hon. Members on both sides of the House who care about the British shipping industry, I have been drawing the attention of the House to that steady decline year by year and seeking remedial action.
I wish to give the House the correct figures which I have received from the General Council of British Shipping. From the peak in 1975 of 1,614 ships of 50 million deadweight tonnes, the fleet decreased to 640 ships of 16 million deadweight tonnes at the end of September 1985. That is a decline to nearly one third. In fairness, we must take account of technological improvements because today a container ship does a great deal more work than a cargo ship used to do. That varies, depending on the route, but I am told that the displacement of the older vessel by the new is a factor of three or four. Nevertheless, that is a dramatic fall, and we should take it into account.
Despite the recognition of that decline by successive Ministers, the Government have not succeeded in arresting, let alone reversing, it. To be fair to Ministers, we must recognise that many of the factors which have been having such a corrosive effect on our fleet are worldwide in character and largely unamenable to actions by our Government acting alone. For that reason, I have been looking expectantly to the European Community to put a shipping policy package together which would halt the decline in European shipping.
Our European neighbours have also been suffering a decline in their merchant fleets, but not at the same rate as ours, and with the notable exception of Greece which distorts all EC figures. Therefore, it has been in our national interest to encourage the Commission to come forward with a shipping policy, and I welcome its initiative. However, I regret the delay, and I am not particulary satisfied with the results. Meantime—this cannot be emphasised too often—much of the British Merchant Navy has been quietly but irresistibly disappearing into the mists of history.
The Commission's analysis of the reasons for the decline in European shipping reveals no new factors of which we were previously unaware. Indeed, it follows conventional analysis, but is not necessarily the worse for that. It also follows, not surprisingly, the free trade spirit of the treaty of Rome in its basic recommendation that the Community should not abandon what we in the United Kingdom used to call an open-seas policy. It is worth reminding the House of the words used by the Commission in the document. It states:
A move to protectionist policy would almost certainly lead to a similar policy on the part of the US and most other countries and cross-trading opportunities would be lost; whilst in the direct trades little or nothing would be gained. In the Commission's view the maintenance of a non-protectionist shipping policy is still in the best interests of the Community shipping industry.
That is fine, provided the Community acts against unfair competition, and so I looked expectantly to this report. The broad statement of Community policy leads directly


to the Community's need to take collective action against other countries which either follow protectionist policies or do not play to international rules.
The following paragraph of the report states:
It will, in the Commission's view, be necessary for the Community and its Member States to be more active than in the past to counter the threat to Community interests from policies and practices adopted by other countries which make difficult or impossible the maintenance of a commercially competitive system and which consequently reduce the possibilities for profitable enterprise open to the Community's shipowners.
That is fine, but I wonder how far there is a programme for action in the document along those lines, and how far there is merely a vague recognition that there is a problem, and some day somewhere something may be done.
I then turned to the Commission's proposals against unfair pricing practices and read the analysis, which is good. Again, there is a reluctance to come to the point at issue. The report states:
For some time now the Commission has paid particular attention—through its monitoring of specific liner trades—to the activities of state trading countries such as the USSR. The monitoring exercise, started in 1979 and covering trades between the Community to and from Central America, East Africa and the Far East, has been working very satisfactorily and has revealed that such tactics employed by state trading countries' carriers as underquoting and the creaming off of high paying cargo are causing damage to Community carriers.
The Commission recognises the problem, but then it lays down many criteria, at the end of which it states:
If all these criteria are satisfied the Commission proposes that it should be empowered to impose a countervailing duty on the freight rate(s) in question.
We should move much more quickly to impose such countervailing duties. The sooner they are imposed, the more likely those who are causing unfair competition and unfair pricing will take remedial action.

Mr. Jonathan Sayeed: Does my hon. Friend believe that one of the possible reasons why this report does not have more teeth is that Community members may be responsible for some of the restrictive practices and pricing policies? Consequently any action against them may have been watered down.

Sir David Price: That is certainly possible, but as I was not involved in the discussions in Brussels I cannot answer my hon. Friend. Possibly the Minister can when he replies.
Why does the idea of imposing countervailing duties apply to passenger and cruise ships? I am sure all hon. Members who follow shipping matters have had representations from British shipowners. However, I do not wish to detain the House for long, and I should like to consider the internal market, as it is called in the paper.
I wish to take up the points made by the right hon. Member for Govan and by my right hon. Friend the Member for Taunton on cabotage. My right hon. Friend the Member for Taunton was kind enough to give me a pat on the back for raising this issue on a number of occasions. I do not think enough people are aware of the importance of coastal shipping not only to the shipping industry, but in its own right as a method of moving goods and freight around the United Kingdom. It is comfortably the second largest method after road transport. A great deal more tonne mileage is moved by coastal shipping around Britain than, I regret to say, by British Rail. I draw the attention of the House to this because it is an important matter in itself. Coastal shipping is also important, as right hon. and

hon. Members have already said, as a good base for our shipping industry. I am grateful that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State has been zealous in his desire to obtain access to the coast trades of other member states for British ships.
My right hon. Friend has had some success with Germany, but little success elsewhere. My right hon. Friend posed three alternatives, but I suggest a fourth. If my right hon. Friend has no collective success with the member states, then he should build on his experience with Germany and try for more bilateral arrangements. If that does not succeed, I am entirely with him on his third alternative: to close our coastlines to ships of other nations. I sense that is the general feeling of the House.
In the context of the forthcoming Budget, I draw my right hon. Friend's attention to a chapter in the Commission's report dealing with how the Community can properly help our seafarers. The Commission recommends tax concessions as appropriate aids to seafarers. For better accuracy, I shall quote the passage:
The Commission would regard a favourable direct tax regime for Community seafarers as a reasonable way of helping to maintain the employment of EEC nationals on Community ships.
Obviously my right hon. Friend cannot comment on that. However, I hope that, within collective responsibility, he will make certain that my' right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer takes that recommendation firmly on board.

Mr. Stephen Ross: I start by supporting the Secretary of State when he visits Belgium on Thursday to uphold the rights of Sealink with the Belgian Government. The Minister will be aware that I have not always said nice things about Sealink since it has been privatised, but I think this issue deserves the support of the whole House and I hope he is successful.
I spoke to Mr. James Sherwood a few days after he had acquired Sealink and I made it clear that he had the virtual control of my constituency's economy in his hands—80 per cent. of all those who go to and fro, and most of the commercial traffic. I asked Mr. Sherwood whether he could reopen the Robb-Caledon yard at Leith to build a third "ro-ro" ferry. Mr. Sherwood had already said that he intended to order another such ferry straight away to carry some 150 cars. Scottish Members will be aware that the two largest car ferries that operate from the Isle of Wight were built at the Robb-Caledon yard—they were the last to be built—and they are successful boats.
Mr. Sherwood said that I must have thought him mad and that there was no likelihood of his ordering the boat from a British shipyard. He said that the boat would probably be ordered from the far east, although it could be fitted out in Britain or possibly in Scandinavia. I am glad to say that the third ferry is being built in Britain, not at Robb-Caledon but on Humberside. At least Mr. Sherwood has discovered that he can have a ship built in this country at a price which is acceptable to him.
We have had a powerful and damning speech from the right hon. Member for Taunton (Sir E. du Cann). He is chairman of the maritime group in the House, and I support all that he has said. I thought that he was a trifle hard on the Community, for I believe the rundown in our merchant fleet would have occurred even if we had stayed outside the EEC. However, at least we now have moves


towards a common maritime policy. That must make sense. The General Council of British Shipping, in its brief to the debate, gives its blessing to the EEC document, and it states that it shares its support for free trade and points out the important statistic which has not been quoted in the debate, that British shipowners still earn half their income from carrying other people's trade.
The National Union of Marine Aviation and Shipping Transport Officers claims, however, that a move to a common maritime policy will do nothing to protect or promote British flag ships. Like many others in the House and outside, I am desperately concerned at the demise of the British merchant fleet. Many statistics have already been given and I will not bore the House with more. However, I would direct Members' attention to the document "Why the ships went", which has recently been published by the British Maritime League. It should be read by all Members, as they would learn much from it. That document forecasts that, by 1987–88, we will be down to about 500 ships, and it lists the different types. I will not bore the House with them, but it is a worrying statistic.
I do not believe that hiding behind our own protective barriers will do much, if anything, to stem the tide of decline. We stand a better chance of regaining lost ground if we support the Commission's proposals but press continually for much earlier action to implement them.
Such pressure should be exerted not only in Brussels but in the United States. In fairness to the Secretary of State, he recently made a speech on this subject in Washington. I happen to have read that speech and I congratulate him on his action. I hope that the Secretary of State will be tough in Brussels. He can be pretty nasty at times and he should be as nasty as possible over there. The Secretary of State should keep his barbed comments for Brussels and be nicer to those of us on Standing Committees.
The Commission states on page 27 of the report:
it seems to the Commission that the promotion of a competitive Community shipping industry in terms of a non-protectionist policy, which could well mean an increasing concentration on high value, high technology services, is an effective means of ensuring and possibly expanding employment of EEC nationals in the long run.
The Commission suggests that there should be more attention to training. As the hon. Member for Eastleigh, (Sir D. Price) has stated, there should be a direct tax regime to increase the chances of employment for EEC nationals on Community ships.
With the Budget a week away, I know that the Secretary of State is debarred from commenting on this, but I hope that he has been putting pressure on his former friends in the Treasury to introduce some favourable tax incentives to the Merchant Navy, the shipping industry and perhaps those people working in the industry. That would be a step forward in the attempts to assist an industry which is in crisis.
I have read the explanatory memorandum submitted by the Department of Transport on the various annexes. That relating to annex 11–6 deals with the important subject of unfair pricing practices in marine transport. Like the Secretary of State, I welcome the appearance of these regulations, subject to the need to tackle unfair competition within the Community itself. I know that the Secretary of State is attempting to do that. Annex 11–5 concerns the application of EEC competition rules. It is rather more controversial and comes in for some criticism

from the GCBS. Such criticism is in conflict with the Government's views, and perhaps we will have some comment on that when the Minister replies.
I welcome the paragraphs in the main document on marine safety and pollution prevention. I urge that pressure be put on those countries which have not yet ratified the relevant international instruments. I represent a part of the country which is close to busy shipping lanes and has a coastline that is vulnerable to pollution. It is essential that ships passing through those waters are in sound condition—we have already taken steps in that direction—and under the control of somebody with experience and local knowledge. Several years ago, I went to Brussels with a local government delegation concerned with this subject, but nothing happened. Something has now happened, and it appears in the document. It is well itemised and I welcome all that it says.
Earlier today we received the views of Trinity House on the future of marine pilotage—a subject that the Select Committee on Transport considered last summer and reported on in July. I gather that legislation on the subject is probably due next Session. We made some recommendations about safety standards, compulsory pilotage and the manning of pilot boats, all of which are dealt with in the document. We found that Trinity House is held in high respect on the continent of Europe. It must have a major role to play in the future of coastal maritime affairs.
The motion accords with my thinking and that of my colleagues. If the motion is divided on—I would regret that—I shall vote with the Government.

Mr. Richard Ottaway: It is a pleasure to speak after the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross). I endorse what he said about pollution. Many members of the Community have a Mediterranean coastline and a large role to play in combating pollution there.
I warmly welcome the Government's thrust towards this document — "Progress Towards a Common Transport Policy". I welcome anything that helps to remove internal barriers to trade in the EC. The proposals on cabotage are important. I do not support retaliation. Threatening to put up our shutters if we cannot get agreement does not help, but it must be said that, unless we can get the support of our European partners, we cannot rule out such action. We have strength in Europe. If we cannot get a common policy, we must protect our own interests, especially if we are faced with competition from non-United Kingdom vessels which receive fiscal support and other favourable conditions. I have in mind the fierce competition that offshore support vessels experience in the North sea. Many offshore support vessels are laid up primarily because of unfair competition from other countries.
One of the most serious problems facing our maritirne fleet arises from the fact that, apart from their support. for the Commission's proposal, the Government do not have a policy for the merchant marine. It is questionable whether the Government sincerely want a merchant fleet. Of course, they will pay lip service to the objective of a British merchant fleet, but they have shown no practical support for it.
I agree with ny right hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Sir E. du Cann) who, in an excellent speech,


called for a single Minister to get to grips with the British merchant fleet's problem and to formulate policies and promote them here and in the country. With the decline of the British merchant fleet, we are witnessing flagging out. A shipowner does not flag out from the British flag lightly, whether it be British Petroleum or a small owner. He will flag out for the simple reason that he can operate his ships more commercialy if he has the benefit of such things as lower crew costs and lower registration charges. If he finds it financially worthwhile to flag out, I see no reason why he should do so.

Mr. Ridley: Surely my hon. Friend means he should not do so.

Mr. Ottaway: My right hon. Friend is correct, but he will appreciate that the converse applies. If my right hon. Friend wants shipowners to flag in, he has only to make the prospect attractive. A little arithmetic shows that that would not be an expensive operation. When I made inquiries of the Department of Transport about how much the nation earns from British-owned and flagged vessels, the answer was not very much. I found it slightly surprising that the Department could not give a precise figure, but it reckoned that taxation revenue from British flagged ships amounted to about £20 million a year. That is a drop in the ocean for the Chancellor.
I hesitate to speak of capital allowances because the Government have just scrapped them, but if we could introduce disguised capital allowances and call them assistance to the British merchant fleet and they cost £20 million, and many ships flagged back in because it was financially attractive to do so, the benefit to the country would be immense. Crews would be employed and the many service industries in the City of London which rely on shipping would be helped. The service industries are to be found in the City of London for primarily historic reasons. The growth in world shipping occurred when London was the centre of world shipping. If London is no longer regarded as the centre of world shipping, the service industries, which bring in about £4 billion a year to the country—that should be contrasted with the £20 million—will simply drift away. It will become attractive to conduct arbitrations in New York or Geneva, because that is where the shipowners are. The chartered surveyors and engineers will wander off because there will be no good reason for remaining in London.
With the price of oil dropping, there will clearly be more trade in oil. The many oil tankers that have been laid up in the Norwegian fjords are being pulled out. That stimulus to trade—it might have been Sheikh Yamani who did it—shows how a little injection of enthusiasm to world trade can promote activity.
Many hon. Members have mentioned defence, but it was noticeably absent from my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State's speech. I do not blame him for that, as he is presenting proposals for a Common Market policy, but he and my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister have often said that we can still mount a Falklands operation. However, 50 per cent. of the ships that were used in the Falklands operation have been sold or are no longer available. We have had several NATO exercises recently. A couple of years ago we had operation Lionheart and just

a few weeks ago we had a NATO exercise off Norway. On both occasions we had to charter Danish vessels to move British troops and stores.

Mr. Ridley: Where a ship that is chartered for military exercises comes from depends on what ships are available and whether they can be more gainfully engaged, because, for the military exercise, it is a one-off charter. The picture is therefore more encouraging than my hon. Friend thinks, because British ships suitable for the purpose were engaged on contracts elsewhere. Only underused Danish tonnage was available. That means that our ships were on more profitable business.

Mr. Ottaway: I think that proves my point. If ships are gainfully employed on commercial operations elsewhere, why does my right hon. Friend think they will suddenly be available in moments of crisis of which he has no notice?

Mr. Ridley: My hon. Friend should know that we can requisition tonnage in times of tension or war on a wide scale. We would most certainly do that.

Mr. Ottaway: My right hon. Friend says that we can requisition tonnage. Of course, much of the tonnage to which he refers is now flagged out. It is well established that he can requisition ships under, for example, the flag of Bermuda. However, he will have to find out where a ship is, pull it back, get rid of the crew and get British certificated officers on board, if there are any. He might then be able to start. The fact that the crisis may be over by that time is neither here nor there.
There is another aspect. A British-owned vessel may be flagged out under the Liberian flag. As yet, nobody has tried to requisition a British-owned vessel under non-British colonial ownership or flag. I do not think that it will be appropriate to test whether we can requisition a British-owned vessel under Liberian or Panamanian flags in the courts at a time of crisis. The crisis will be over by the time the courts decide.
The other day I was talking to a British shipowner who flagged out under the Bermudan flag because he found it more financially attractive to do so. He is now despairing. He wanted to get British business, he wanted to take things to the Falklands, but he found that other vessels were being chartered. There was no positive encouragement for him to keep his vessels available for use by the Ministry of Defence or the Department of Transport. I am not saying that he should rely solely upon business from the Government, but if there is not a system of priority chartering of British-flagged vessels for Government use, there is no encouragement for a shipowner to keep his ship on stand-by for use in times of crisis.
This is the greatest nation on earth, and it was built upon a history of maritime affairs. I believe that we should turn the corner in our lack of policy. We should start to formulate a policy. I think that the report we are debating and the European aspect is welcome. We have the European side sorted out. We must now get our own national fleet sorted out.

Mr. Michael Cocks: I shall be brief because many of the points I wish to raise have already been adequately covered on both sides of the House. I wish to say that it is a travesty that we are here pleading for the remnants of the Merchant Navy of this country. Those of


us who were brought up on Jane's Fighting Ships and the gallantry of the Merchant Navy seamen during the war find this a bitter issue to face. Bristol, which I still represent, has a very long maritime tradition and has adapted to the times—the shifting from the port in the heart of the city to the out-port of Avonmouth and latterly constructing west dock.
Our debate on these regulations stems from the loss of sovereignty which took place when we joined the EEC. It is interesting that I speak shortly after the right hon. Member for Taunton (Sir E. du Cann) because when we had our historic debate on the principle of entry he and I were here late at night and I followed shortly after him then. We both expressed reservations about the course which was to be followed. I think that the right hon. Gentleman abstained whereas I voted against it, but we were both extremely unhappy.
One of the arguments which was put forward at that time was that we should have been in at the start of the Common Market, we should have joined when it was formed and that inevitably there was a price to be paid for our late entry. However, it seems to me that we have the worst of all possible worlds. We are told that we have to pay a heavy price for not being in on the initial negotiations on entry and now we are told that some of the latest entrants into the Community are causing us some of the greatest problems. I refer particularly to what was mentioned earlier—cabotage. If we look at the countries which are said to be causing difficulties—Spain, Italy and Greece -- only Italy is a founder member of the European Community. Spain and Greece are latecomers. However, if I may use a slang phrase, they seem to be getting away with it and we seem to be pig in the middle all the time.
On Second Reading of the Bill dealing with the accession of Spain and Portugal I raised an anxiety in my own area about the bottling at source of sherry, port and different wines. I received an assurance from the Minister. However, on reflection it seems to me that we are the only country which seems scrupulously to observe all the rules and regulations within the Community. It also appears that, of all the countries in the EEC, we have pursued the most non-protectionist policy in regard to shipping and yet have suffered the greatest comparative decline. Therefore, on behalf of those of us who are atheistic or agnostic about the EEC, I urge on the Government the need to be strong about this matter.
Some years ago, in the early 1970s, I went on a delegation to the United Nations. Despite my reservations about the EEC, it seemed that one of the great benefits of joining the Community was the possibility of presenting a cohesive voice speaking as one from this great bloc, which the right hon. Member for Taunton mentioned. The size of its population and the sheer bulk of its trade would carry more weight than any of the individual members. It is true that at last some remnants of the shipping policy are coming forward but we wish it had been sooner and more cohesive. Unfortunately, there is now a tendency to talk about economic boycotts and restrictions by countries to enforce political policies and if the EEC speaks as one on this it is in a stronger position. Regrettably, we find that the rules are flouted with apparent impunity.
I should like to follow up the remarks of the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Ottaway). I find it appalling that if we had a problem such as the Falklands dispute we would be scratching around to get the ships

together with which to carry the men, materials and supplies. In his answer to the hon. Member for Nottingham, North, the Secretary of State said that British ships were being used to better advantage. I do not know of any better advantage to which ships can be put than taking British military and civil supplies to an area where we are in a state of conflict. If something is reduced to that sort of commercial equation, I wonder how we define the national interest.
It seems to me that during the first Saturday debate on the Falklands crisis there was a mood in the House which recognised that we had reached a very poor pass as a nation if we were scratching about to service such an operation. I hope that when the Secretary of State discusses the regulations in the Community he will try to get more cohesion and will try to press on our partners there the need to use our economic strength to much greater advantage. I did not want us to go into the Community to join a rich man's club but, in a world with such bickering and backbiting, and people not playing along, he must try to get them together. I wish him well in his efforts, but I hope that we can get more cohesion and more economic strength and do our best to keep our merchant shipping fleet going.

6 pm

Mr. Don Dixon: I agree with the right hon. Member for Taunton (Sir E. du Cann) that we cannot wait much longer for a maritime policy. We cannot wait until the EC gets around to it. His points are reinforced by the fact that not long ago we had a debate on shipbuilding, in which hon. Members commented about the decline in the merchant fleet and were answered by the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry. Later, in a debate on defence, the right hon. Member for Taunton referred to the merchant fleet as the fourth arm of defence and expressed concern about the decline in it. That debate was answered by the Secretary of State for Defence. Today, we are discussing shipping in a debate on an EC document on transport, which will be answered by the Secretary of State for Transport. That alone points to the need for a maritime policy of which a Minister is specifically in control.
In 1981, the Select Committee on Trade and Industry dealt with shipping and shipbuilding, and in its report recommended that there should be a co-ordinated maritime policy for Great Britain. Unfortunately, no one has taken any notice, and right hon. and hon. Members since then have been imploring the Government to do something about the decline, not only in the merchant fleet but in the shipbuilding industry.
The explanatory memorandum on the document says:
These proposals touch on the whole range of issues which affect shipowners; ports policy; maritime research; the operation of technical social, safety and environmental rules and standards; the problem of maritime fraud; the provision of navigational aids within the European waters; and so forth.
However, it does not mention the fact that if we want a fleet we have to build and maintain it. It does not mention the fact that for years the EEC has been talking about a scrap and build policy. Such a policy was first discussed in the EEC in 1977, was brought back in 1979, but is still being discussed. Such a policy would help the merchant fleets, but two other nations are putting a block on the proposals.
Right hon. and hon. Members have spoken about the decline in the United Kingdom fleet from over 1,600 ships and 50 million deadweight tonnes to 640 ships and 16


million deadweight tonns. Our shipping industry has declined—50,000 seafarers have lost their jobs, and, what is more, the composition of the fleet leaves much to be desired. For example, 42·7 per cent. of our ships are over 10 years old, 13·7 per cent. are over 15 years old and 5·1 per cent. are over 20 years old. This compares with Denmark, France, Spain, Germany and Norway who have, respectively, 77 per cent., 73 per cent., 71 per cent., 69 per cent. and 68 per cent. of their vessels less than 10 years old. Such a large loss of ships in the United Kingdom fleet and the age of the remaining ships leave much to be desired.
We are talking not about a few thousand seafarers and a few ships but about the possible effects on 300,000 people employed in shipping. One of the problems is that we have always fought by the Marquess of Queensberry rules while everybody else has been involved in all-in wrestling. We know that Korea will carry its exports in ships under the Korean flag and that France will import oil only in French oil tankers. United Kingdom shipowners have had to contend with such practices for a long time.
The decline in the merchant fleet is reflected in the way that the British shipbuilding industry has declined. When the shipbuilding industry was nationalised in June 1977, 87,000 men were working in the industry. This year, British Shipbuilders is employing 10,000 men, albeit some have been transferred to the privatised warship yards. Next year, we have been told that there are no orders for merchant shipping and that that number will fall to 4,000 men.
It has already been said that if Galtieri were to invade the Falklands again today, we would not be able to put out a task force because we would not have the merchant ships available that we once had. In the 1930s, we also had no maritime policy. I can recall the rationalisation of those years. There was a shipbuilding security limit, and merchant bankers, shipbuilders and shipowners felt that there was over-capacity and used to go around buying up shipyards and closing them, and putting an embargo on the building of ships. In 1934, they came to the town where I was born and bred and closed down the Palmers Jarrow shipyard, one of the biggest enterprises in the world. Iron ore would come in and go out as a complete ship on the river Tyne. That yard was closed through shortsightedness and rationalisation, and in 1939 we could not get enough shipbuilders to build and repair our ships for the war. This is one of the dangers that we face, unless something is done immediately by the Government to try to stop the decline in the merchant fleet and the shipbuilding industry.
The Government's argument is that market forces should operate in this sector, but look what happened in Sweden. The last merchant shipbuilding yard there closed a matter of months ago and that country was one of the biggest merchant shipping builders in Europe only a few years ago.
Flagging out is another important factor in what is happening in the shipping industry at the moment. It affects people who sail the ships, and I have a letter from the deputy general-secretary of NUMAST, who was concerned at BP's decision to flag out its ships. He says:
If its flag-out moves are allowed to follow the pattern of others in recent years we can confidently predict that within the very near future;

—firstly the United Kingdom ratings will be replaced;
—then the junior officer's jobs will be handed to Filippino or

others;
—very shortly thereafter most of the United Kingdom senior officers will go;
—after a further period the United Kingdom Master and Chief Engineer will be replaced".

That is the effect of BP's decision, and some 1,700 jobs for British seafarers will be lost for ever.
The Minister should be pressing Europe and asking it what it is doing about the scrap and build scheme. If it does not soon introduce a scheme, we should unilaterally adopt one ourselves. I accept the point made by the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Sir D. Price) about tax concessions. I think that such concessions are essential and I hope that the Chancellor of the Exchequer will make some provision next week in that direction. However, I believe that tax concessions or tax incentives should go only to shipowners who build ships in this country. It is important that any concessions should go to British shipowners.

Mr. Harry Ewing: I would have liked to discuss two issues in relation to the documents that we are discussing tonight—the ports policy in connection with competition imports and the, navigational assistance to shipping in European waters. In view of the constraints on time however, I will concentrate my comments on navigational assistance to shipping in European waters.
As the House Knows, and the documents state, a research programme was set up in 1981 named "COST 301." The purpose of the research programme was to investigate the safety measures for shipping in European waters. I make that point as a background to my comments about navigational assistance.
Navigational assistance is inextricably linked to pilotage, which was referred to by the hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) and in the report submitted today Trinity House and the pilotage commission. As the Secretary of State will know, over the years there have Been attempts to harmonise the pilotage arrangements in ports in this country with the pilotage arrangements in European ports. My constituency covers the River Forth and the port of Grangemouth and I have strongly opposed any attempt to harmonise pilotage arrangements in European ports with those in ports on the River Forth in Scotland.
I am making a brief constituency point because there are many risks for shipping in the port of Grangemouth and the narrow navigational channel leading to it. When the Secretary of State discusses navigational assistance to shipping in European waters, he must take account of the pilotage arrangements. It is not practicable to harmonise pilotage arrangements in the River Forth with those in European ports because there are extreme hazards in that narrow navigational channel.
Before I describe those hazards, I should like to draw to the Secretary of State's attention the proposals from Europe that vessels under a certain tonnage should be able to enter ports without the need for pilotage. I am not so naive as to believe that pilots in this country do not peddle their own interests. There are pilots in my constituency and I art not taken in by the fact that many of them have come to see me at my constituency surgeries to tell me about the dangers on the River Forth. I can see both sides of the argument, and I am trying to be fair.
However, it is simply not on to expect vessels under a certain tonnage to come into a highly volatile port like


Grangemouth without pilotage. The heart of the petrochemical industry is located at Grangemouth. The new Braefoot bay terminal, which is the export point for the Shell-Esso liquid gas and petroleum plant which was built at Mossmorran, is located on the navigational channel leading to the port of Grangemouth. Fairly substantial ships are loaded with highly volatile liquid chemicals for export on the edge of that narrow navigational channel. Further up the channel is the Hound point terminal, which is the other end of the North sea oil industry. Tankers of a fairly substantial tonnage are loaded with oil for export there on the edge of that narrow channel. The royal naval dockyard at Rosyth, which is a nuclear refitting base, is also on the edge of that narrow channel.
I must put it on the record that it would be highly dangerous for my constituents in Bo'ness and Grangemouth and in all the other towns that skirt the River Forth if vessels of any size were allowed to travel that narrow channel without an experienced pilot on board.
Although I have made these comments briefly, I hope that the Secretary of State will consider them in his discussions on the draft regulations and in his consideration of the legislation which we are told by Trinity House today is likely to be introduced in the next Session. I hope that, in finalising these regulations and in drafting the legislation to which Trinity House has referred, the Secretary of State will take account of the markets and warnings that I have given on behalf of my constituents.
The safety of those who sail the seas is paramount in shipping; but of equal importance is the safety of those who live in the towns and villages that skirt the shores. I hope that I have said enough to sound a warning to the Secretary of State about the dangers to my constituency and the other small towns on the River Forth if pilotage were abolished.

Mr. Jonathan Sayeed: I thank the hon. member for Falkirk, East (Mr Ewing) for keeping to one point and allowing me to speak.
The fact that a massive bureaucracy such as the Common Market has at long last organised a common policy and written a document demonstrates how serious is the decline of the merchant fleet generally, and of the merchant fleet in this country in particular. Now that the policy has been produced, will it actually work? The answer to that depends on whether the policy has teeth.
Right hon. and hon. Members have mentioned that in 1975 we had the largest number of ships and the greatest tonnage. We should, however, also note that we had the largest number of shipping bankruptcies in that year. With or without our membership of the Community, the recession, the change from our major markets being deep-sea markets to being short or near-sea markets, the change to larger and more efficient ships and the change that North sea oil has brought about, there would have been a decline in the number of British ships and British tonnage.
The question is not how we are going to reverse that decline but how we are going to halt it. I am not so optimistic as to believe that we can return to the dead weight tonnages of 1975.
I return to the point that I made about the teeth in this EEC directive. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Sir D. Price) was quite scathing about the directive's lack

of penalties. We must penalise the dumping of shipping on to the market at freight rates which bear no relation to their economic costs. Within the Community we need to organise better cabotage arrangements. I am delighted that the Government are at long last waking up to the reality that a shipping policy is essential for this country. I believe that my right hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Sir E. du Cann) and other Members in this House and in the other place have made sure that the Government are beginning to understand how important a coherent shipping policy is to this country.
It has sometimes been suggested that artificially low freight rates are good for this country, as they help our exports. They may be in our short-term interests, but one must consider who is offering these artificially low rates. One would then recognise that those rates are not in our long-term interests.
There are already, and there will increasingly be, powerful trading blocs—the United States, the Comecon countries, south-east Asia, with Japan and later China leading, and Europe. For a trading bloc to be effective, the internal market must be large enough to provide the economies of scale that would make it internationally competitive. Therefore, internally we need unselfishness and co-operation. Internally, Britain has been gentlemanly but other countries, within the Common Market and outside it, have been exceedingly self-centred. We have been losing out. I hope that these regulations are but the first step towards ensuring that the internal market works effectively and works for and not against us. I hope that Britain as a major market can work in its own interests on an international scale.

Mr. Roger Stott: The debate has shown the House at its very best, because we do not often get almost complete unanimity on a subject. Every hon. Member is concerned about this subject, and that is the reason for the consensus.
When I left the Merchant Navy some 22 years ago. Britain's merchant fleet was one of the largest in the world. In every port in every country the red duster could be seen flying as a symbol of Britain's trading links and civil naval power. However, 22 years on, the picture is very different. It is almost beyond belief that this island nation, with its maritime history, has only 640 merchant ships flying the red ensign. This is profoundly worrying to the sea-going trade unions, to the General Council of British Shipping, to me and to almost every hon. Member who has spoken in the debate. I hope that the Secretary of State is seized of that fact.
The General Council of British Shipping has estimated that, if the present rate of decline continues, the British trading fleet will be reduced to between 200 and 400 vessels by 1990. The net loss of qualified seafarers is likely to continue at a rate of 5,000 a year. Almost every hon. Member who has spoken in the debate has referred to the acceleration in the decline in the past decade in the number of United Kingdom registered ships. As the armed forces do not maintain enough vessels in their own right, clearly it is to the advantage of the United Kingdom that we have a merchant marine which can support the Royal Navy in difficult times.
The sectors most hard hit have been the cargo liners, the bulk carriers and the tankers. In the past 10 years, more than 30 million deadweight tonnes have been lost. In the


first nine months of 1984, more than 2 million deadweight tonnes were lost. Another two or three years of losses at that rate and, according to most experts, the fleet will be reduced substantially to about 12 million deadweight tonnes. The number of deadweight tonnes is perhaps more significant than the reduction in the number of ships.
The General Council of British Shipping and the unions argue that, in the next five years, there is likely to be an acute shortage of trained manpower in the industry. This will make it even more difficult for us to meet the demands for a defence capability. I and many other people believe that we will not be able to mount a Falklands-like campaign again. I have argued before about this matter with the Minister of State, Department of Transport. He has said that, if there is a conflict, Britain will have the right to reclaim those ships that have been flagged out. I was interested to hear the hon. Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Ottaway) say that that may be possible if the ships sail under the Bermudan flag, but it may be more difficult if they sail under the Liberian flag. That is one difficulty. Another difficulty is that, even if we get those ships back to help the Royal Navy in times of conflict and difficulty, we would not get the crews back. Foreign crews are hardly likely to rush to participate in an imperialistic war on behalf of the United Kingdom.
Given that scenario, there is an overwhelming case for greater co-ordination between Government and industry. If there is a defence rationale in terms of the size and adaptability of the merchant fleet, there is obviously a case for setting a level below which, in the national interest, the fleet should not fall. However, to my knowledge, no such planning and co-ordination is taking place.
Britain has moved from the position in the 1950s when she had the largest merchant fleet, the second largest Navy, a large fishing industry and a large shipbuilding industry. This rapid decline is tragic. If in the future we are engaged in a military conflict, there will be problems in finding the men to man the ships required, even if ships sailing under other flags can be obtained. The trained officers and men to man them are unlikely to be available, unless steps are taken now to create a Merchant Navy reserve. In 1939, there were 159,000 seamen in Britain's merchant fleet; today, there are fewer than 40,000. It is against the background of that rapid and accelerating decline that we should judge these proposals.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes) and the right hon. Member for Taunton (Sir E. du Cann) outlined the difficulties they saw in the regulations. I echo their remarks. The European Community depends to a large extent on its merchant shipping for its economic and social advance. With about one third of the world's seaborne imports and one seventh of the world's seaborne exports, shipping is vital for the Community. Traditionally, member states have carried a large proportion of their own trade in national flag vessels and some have been particularly important carriers of trade between other countries. Merchant shipping makes an enormous contribution to the Community's economy. It is a lifeline for imports and exports, it helps to earn foreign currency and it benefits the balance of payments. It is a customer of Community services, such as shipbuilding, steel and other related products. It is clear beyond doubt,

therefore, that the Community's merchant marine is important on many fronts. If there is a further decline, the problems will continue.
I do not have a great deal of time in which to go into great depth about the regulations. I hope that the House will forgive me. I should like to make a number of points because it is important for the Secretary of State to respond to hon. Members' suggestions.
On flags of convenience, the Commission's analysis and the proposed measures have ignored the fact that shipping differs from other industries because of the rights and obligations which flow from registration. A ship represents a particularly mobile piece of its flag state inasmuch as the flag state's jurisdiction extends to the ship; yet it represents also a particularly mobile form of capital, the ownership of which can change quickly and can be almost totally obscured.
The Commission refers to "flagging out" as a response to the loss of a competitive advantage for member states' fleets. It argues that flagging out is a means used increasingly by EEC owners to remain competitive in world shipping markets and at the same time to retain control of their operations. Yet the Commission completely fails to acknowledge that it is the very existence of flags of convenience which makes it difficult for traditional ship operators to remain competitive.
As long as there is a mechanism to which owners can resort for avoiding social, safety and financial obligations, it will be difficult for any responsible owner to remain competitive. Furthermore, the Commission's statement that open registry shipping fosters the operation of highly competitive shipping services is an absurd justification for a system which has been set up primarily to flout attempts to impose controls at national or international level on safety, crewing and other aspects of seagoing activity. It is the very existence of flags of convenience that causes some of the major problems in world shipping today. The European Community should do something about it quickly.
My hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North drew attention to annex II.2. A more positive approach to the question of cabotage would be the introduction of EEC wide cabotage, allowing member states to restrict participation in their coastal trade to their own flag or to those EEC flags which removed restrictions. That reciprocity would mean that we could enter the waters of other countries and they could enter our waters. If we cannot have reciprocity, it is not in our interest to continue the dialogue with the European Community. The chairman of the transportation committee in the European Assembly, a Greek whose name I cannot pronounce, said that we are talking about a free market approach but that we must take into account the differences which exist between member states. I am sure that the Greek Government and Greek shipping and transport Ministers are doing that. That is where we will probably find the most difficulty.
My hon. Friend outlined specific proposals that would help to stop the decline of Britain's merchant fleet. Other hon. Members, notably the right hon. Member for Taunton and the hon. Member for Eastleigh (Sir D. Price), both of whom have had a high profile on the issue for many years and who are concerned about the way in which our merchant fleet has declined, have expressed concern and have asked the Secretary of State to do something positive.
I want to underline the points made by my hon. Friend the Member for Aberdeen, North by urging the Secretary of State to read the document prepared by the International Transport Federation entitled "Towards a Common Maritime Transport Policy". That is a very good document, which points to sensible solutions to the problem. If the Secretary of State has not read that document, I ask him to do so because it makes a major contribution on the subject.
The maritime unions have consistently, realistically and accurately underlined the problems of the decline in their industry. They have also consistently, realistically and accurately put forward soundly based solutions for its survival. I want to do the same. The International Transport Federation, in its submission to the European Community, made proposals which could help. I shall refer to six of them.
Instead of opposing cargo-sharing arrangements the Commission should tackle the orderly development of cargo movements. The relationship between shipbuilding and other industries, such as steel, should be examined and an integrated approach should be adopted. A European scrap and build policy should be introduced with the aim of getting rid of substandard ships and building new ships in European shipyards to the highest standards and with the most advanced technical features. The capital side of shipping should be examined to see how the financing of Community shipping could meet the competitive advantages offered in non-Community shipyards and to non-Community owners, with particular reference to far east shipyards and shipowners. The fiscal regimes of flags of convenience countries should be considered, with a view to eliminating the unfair advantages which arise from the way in which capital and profits are created.
Most importantly for seamen, the social aspects of seafarers' employment should be examined with particular reference to hours of work and pressure to reduce crews. Strict regulations exist for the hours of work of other transport workers, such as lorry drivers, but the Commission has ignored the lack of regulation in shipping and the dangers which excessive working time poses to the health and safety of seafarers, vessels and the environment. Regulations on minimum rest periods, leave and time off should be introduced. There are other suggestions in that document which the Secretary of State might adopt.
As for my own suggestions, there is an overwhelmingly urgent need, as has been said on both sides of the House, for the appointment of a Cabinet Minister responsible for co-ordinating maritime policy. It is time the Government decided upon the level at which the Merchant Navy should be maintained. In his forthcoming Budget the Chancellor of the Exchequer should introduce a tax regime to help positively British shipowners to purchase ships from British yards. The trade unions and the shipping industry have been telling him that. The Government need to see shipping and shipbuilding as being more interdependent. Britain needs an integrated maritime policy. The first plank of such a policy should be the reservation of coastal trade and offshore supplies, combining the ordering, designing, building, operating, manning and repairing of ships for the United Kingdom within the United Kingdom.
As in so many other industries in Britain today, we are approaching five minutes to midnight. Shipping is crucial to this island nation. British shipping has served the nation well. British seamen have served the nation well in peace

and war. It is now up to the Government to show them and the nation that they have a policy which will stop the terminal decline of the industry.

Mr. Ridley: With the leave of the House, I shall try to answer as many of the points raised in this excellent debate as time allows.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen, North (Mr. Hughes), who has apologised for not being here, asked about the trouble we are having with Belgium and about the type of order that might be made. The hon. Gentleman was correct. Section 14 orders, under the normal procedure, require the approval of the House before action is taken. That is the type of order upon which I have consulted. Section 15 also allows action in advance of approval. We could use such an order if it was necessary but, as I have already said, I hope it will not be.
The hon. Member for Isle of Wight (Mr. Ross) and the hon. Member for Falkirk, East (Mr. Ewing) made considerable contributions about pilotage. I hope they will forgive me if I leave that to another occasion. The Government wish to legislate on it at the earliest opportunity and it does not fit in with the rest of the debate, although I listened with care and interest to what the hon. Gentlemen said.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen, North mentioned the serious problem of maritime fraud, although I do not think it is responsible for all the sinkings that he listed round the world. Solutions will only be reached through international co-operation. I assure the House that no nation is playing a bigger part in the discussions in the International Maritime Organisation and under the auspices of the United Nations than we are in trying to make progress on that important and dangerous subject.
Many hon. Members, particularly the hon. Member for Jarrow (Mr. Dixon), referred at length to shipbuilding. I do not think we should discuss that matter now. If we are to help the United Kingdom shipping industry we must consider its problems in isolation and not seek to tie it to, say, the supply of ships.

Mr. Milian: Why should we look at the shipping industry in isolation? Every hon. Member who has spoken today has said that it should be looked at in the context of a general maritime policy. The trouble is that we have been looking at it in isolation.

Mr. Ridley: I do not agree. It is right that the sources of purchase of transport equipment, whether for aeroplanes ships, buses, trains or cars, should be considered separately from the environment in which those transport industries operate.
There were pleas that the alleged six Ministers who deal with shipping in Britain should be rolled into one. I hate to have to say that that dreaded responsibility already falls on me and on my noble friend Lord Caithness, who has listened to much of the debate. Although I hesitate to expose myself to the wrath of the House more than I need, I cannot claim that other Ministers share that responsibility.
Let me come to the problems of the merchant fleet on the wider canvas and deal with many of the points that have been made. We take seriously the cries for help which the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North said that the industry has put forward. Much of what we are in the


course of doing will prove to be much more helpful than perhaps hon. Members have given us credit for. Moreover, it is a difficult time for me to debate this because we are a week from the Budget and I cannot possibly give a hint, even if I were able to do so, of what my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer proposes. Much of the argument today has been about fiscal matters which cannot be pursued at this difficult time in the calendar of the House.
Let me say what the Commission's proposals will do to assist the decline in tonnage in the United Kingdom register. The right hon. Member for Bristol, South (Mr. Cocks) said that the regulations were too late and in a way I agree with him. I wish that they had come forward much earlier. But it is perhaps of some significance that they have been brought forward, debated and more or less agreed, quicker than any regulations that I can recall in the Community's existence. That is a measure of the urgency and importance with which the Community views the matter.
The regulations will be of great importance for liner shipping which, although it accounts for only 13 per cent. of the tonnage on the United Kingdom register, earns 43 per cent. of the revenue of our total fleet. Let me pay tribute to the tremendous performance that our liner companies are putting up in the face of intense competition and, in many trades, gross over-tonnaging.
The hon. Member for Aberdeen, North asked about Taiwan and Japan. There is no evidence as far as I know that the Taiwanese and Japanese liner trades are subsidised at all. However, he is right to say that the United States' lines are subsidised to a publicly known degree which can be ascertained. Secondly, if we can sort out cabotage, an EC policy will be of great benefit to our short sea traders and cruise operators. That underlines the difficulty of choice before us in the EC Shipping Council.
My hon. Friend the Member for Eastleigh (Sir D. Price), the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North and the right hon. Member for Glasgow, Govan (Mr. Millan) discussed cabotage. The GCBS believes that to open the European trades to our ships would be of far greater value than to close British trade to their ships, because the market is much greater than that which would be secured for us. I agree that 10 years is far too long to keep those trades closed to us. We have already pressed for a two or three year period at the utmost and I shall continue to press for the shortest period possible. However, the difficulty is that 12 countries must now agree to any regulation of this sort and we may well have to reconsider the options that I mentioned earlier.

Mr. Sayeed: If we cannot speedily reach agreement on cabotage on a Community-wide basis, will my right hon. Friend take steps to agree cabotage arrangements on a bilateral basis with Community members?

Mr. Ridley: We already have bilateral cabotage agreements with five member states. I gave the options earlier as to how we might pursue this matter and I should not like to decide which options we shall eventually have to take.
I come now to the decline of the fleet and the pressures that have led to the substantial reduction in the size of the United Kingdom fleet over the past 10 years, both through outright sales and transfer to overseas registers of vessels

under United Kingdom beneficial ownership. We are not alone in this. The fleets of virtually every traditional maritime nation have declined in recent years. We must not exaggerate as some hon. Members did today.
The extent of the decline depends on what base year is used. All hon. Members seem to choose 1975. That was an all-time peak for the United Kingdom at an unstable level brought about by excessive subsidy before that period. That in turn shows the danger of excessive subsidy in shipbuilding. The decline from the level of the 1960s is far less marked. If United Kingdom beneficially owned overseas registered shipping—flagged out to foreign registries—is taken into account, the reduction in deadweight tonnage is small—only about 5 per cent. Therefore, there has been some exaggeration of the decline.
Flagging out has been a feature of the debate. We are not the only nation to flag out. Twenty-three per cent. of the Norwegian fleet, 26 per cent. of the Japanese fleet, 36 per cent. of the Greek fleet and 64 per cent. of the United States fleet sails under foreign flags. The United Kingdom figure is 21 per cent.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Taunton (Sir E. du Cann) mentioned the fact that we carry only 20 per cent. of trade from the United Kingdom. The figures show that we carry 22 per cent. of our imports and our partners carry 19 per cent. by weight. Of our exports we carry 24 per cent. and our partners carry 13 per cent. The rest of our trade is carried by cross traders and those cross trades are of immense importance to our fleet. Over 40 per cent. of the earnings of British shipowners comes from the cross trades. If we were to make a move which sought to deny the openness of cross trade to the world's free market fleets, we would do more damage than in any other way that we could to our interests. Therefore, that is not such a strong point as my right hon. Friend suggested.
Furthermore, those are aggregate figures for the decline in tonnage which cover different sectors of the industry—tankers, dry bulk cargoes, cargo liners, ferries, cruise vessels, and short sea and offshore support vessels. None of those is a privileged market—far from it. But their opportunities and prospects differ considerably. That is one reason why broad speculations about the future size of the fleet, while it may be striking and frightening, are not particularly meaningful. One must get down to the detail.
The National Union of Marine Aviation and Shipping Transport Officers has made a crude estimate that numbers in the fleet could fall by half this year. That takes no account of the different prospects for the different sectors of the fleet. On the other hand, the GCBS has recently suggested that numbers might fall to 400 or 500 by 1990.

Mr. Stott: Three hundred to 400.

Mr. Ridley: No, according to the GCBS it is 400 to 500. Neither of those figures allows for the increasing amount of shipping beneficially owned in the United Kingdom but registered overseas.
The surprising and striking omission from the debate has been how few hon. Members have referred to the matter of BP Shipping. My hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham, North (Mr. Ottaway) and the hon. Member for Jarrow did so, but only in passing. As the House knows, the company is handing over manning responsibility for its bulk tanker fleet to three agencies based outside


the United Kingdom. The seagoing staff are being offered early retirement and redundancy terms by BP Shipping and jobs by the agencies. The plan involves the transfer of the ships to the Bermudan register. The company reckons to save £12 million a year by doing this. It is in the order, I believe, of £300,000 per ship per year in running costs alone.
I do not welcome the move, I do not welcome such transfers, but I must make it clear to the House that I have no power to stop any company moving the place of registration of its ships; nor would it be possible for the House to legislate to take such power because any company is free to establish its place of bnsiness and to register its ships in any country that it wishes.
BP's move illustrates the critical importance of the underlying factors of fiscal and crew cost advantage for the particular sorts of shipping involved. Overseas registers are here to stay—they will not go away—and we must seek to make the best use of such shipping for our economic benefit and defence planning as we can. The saving of £300,000 a ship will probably enable BP to run its fleet as an economic viable entity.
It depends to some extent—and this is the important point I wish to put to the House—on whether the overseas registry is British, as in the case of Bermuda, or foreign. This is the point to which my hon. Friend the Member for Nottingham., North referred. Vessels registered in Bermuda fly the red ensign. They are subject to the safety controls of the Bermudan registry which is ultimately controlled by us. The question of safety was raised by the hon. Member for Aberdeen, North. We can control the safety provisions in that registry in the way that I have described, so that point is covered.
The United Kingdom powers to requisition ships apply to the Bermudan registry or to any other dependent territory registry. The constraints of nationality of certain officers on merchant vessels registered in dependent territories are very similar to those in the United Kingdom. This is the point mentioned by the hon. Members for Wigan (Mr. Stott) and for Jarrow. There is no difference in the crewing requirements for the British registry and for the Bermudan registry. That enables us to maintain, and perhaps even with some negotiation to increase, the British crewing proportion. Indeed, in terms of the decline of the United Kingdom fleet and in terms of policy, in my opinion we should be talking about ships on the United Kingdom and the dependent registers together. In discussions with the United Kingdom shipowners, this is one of the matters that I intend to raise about their foreign registered ships and the defence needs of the United Kingdom.
Hon. Members have raised other general points about the availability of ships and crews to meet defence needs. With regard to ships, the House probably knows that the studies carried out for us by consultants last year indicate that generally adequate numbers of suitable ships are, and should continue to be, available to meet the needs of the Ministry of Defence in time of tension and of war.
I repeat what my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister said, that we have no doubt of our capability to mount a similar campaign to the Falklands campaign with the necessary attendant commercial merchant ships which were used on that occasion if the need should arise. There is no doubt whatever about that.

Mr. Ewing: Is that not unpatriotic?

Mr. Ridley: I think it is very unpatriotic of the hon. Gentleman to suggest that we cannot. I assure him that we can.

Sir Edward du Cann: My right hon. Friend surely must agree that it is the duty of all of us in the House to speak the truth as we see it. With the greatest of respect to his view, he has endeavoured to answer the debate by saying that the picture is by no means as black as many of us fear. In my opinion, there are answers to the points that he made. In my opinion, for what it is worth, the picture is indeed very much as black as we have suggested, and we have a duty, if we think that there are dangers in matters of defence, to state that plainly in the House, and there is nothing unpatriotic in doing so.

Mr. Ridley: My right hon. Friend is perfectly justified in seeking to say that, but to say that we do not have an adequate merchant marine to mount a similar operation to the Falklands is simply not the case. I hope that my right hon. Friend will accept that from me, because my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Defence and I have satisfied ourselves fully on that point.
I have more than I can say in the time available about the need for resupply and the ships available in time of tension or of war. This is a responsibility of NATO. NATO would pool its ocean-going shipping. We reckon that the resources of the NATO pool would be substantial, perhaps amounting to 50 per cent. of the deadweight tonnage of the free world. That is the tonnage available to NATO if civil resupply should be necessary.
The Government have studied all these matters. They have a policy for the future of the merchant marine. In addition to what I have said, we are major participants in—

It being three hours after the motion had been entered upon, MR. DEPUTY SPEAKER put the Question pursuant to the order [10 March].

The House divided: Ayes 239, Noes 153.

Division No. 97]
[6.56 pm


AYES


Adley, Robert
Bruinvels, Peter


Alton, David
Bryan, Sir Paul


Amess, David
Buchanan-Smith, Rt Hon A.


Ancram, Michael
Buck, Sir Antony


Arnold, Tom
Butcher, John


Ashby, David
Butterfill, John


Ashdown, Paddy
Carlile, Alexander (Montg'y)


Atkins, Robert (South Ribble)
Carlisle, John (Luton N)


Atkinson, David (B'm'th E)
Carlisle, Kenneth (Lincoln)


Baker, Nicholas (Dorset N)
Carttiss, Michael


Baldry, Tony
Cash, William


Banks, Robert (Harrogate)
Chope, Christopher


Beaumont-Dark, Anthony
Clark, Dr Michael (Rochford)


Beith, A. J.
Clark, Sir W. (Croydon S)


Bendall, Vivian
Clarke, Rt Hon K. (Rushcliffe)


Biggs-Davison, Sir John
Cockeram, Eric


Boscawen, Hon Robert
Colvin, Michael


Bottomley, Peter
Coombs, Simon


Bottomley, Mrs Virginia
Cope, John


Bowden, A. (Brighton K'to'n)
Couchman, James


Bowden, Gerald (Dulwich)
Cranborne, Viscount


Boyson, Dr Rhodes
Crouch, David


Braine, Rt Hon Sir Bernard
Currie, Mrs Edwina


Brandon-Bravo, Martin
Dicks, Terry


Bright, Graham
Dorrell, Stephen


Brinton, Tim
Douglas-Hamilton, Lord J.


Brittan, Rt Hon Leon
Dover, Den


Brooke, Hon Peter
Dunn, Robert


Brown, M. (Brigg &amp; Cl'thpes)
Dykes, Hugh


Bruce, Malcolm
Eggar, Tim






Emery, Sir Peter
Moore, Rt Hon John


Evennett, David
Morris, M. (N'hampton S)


Eyre, Sir Reginald
Moynihan, Hon C.


Fairbairn, Nicholas
Mudd, David


Fallon, Michael
Needham, Richard


Farr, Sir John
Neubert, Michael


Favell, Anthony
Newton, Tony


Finsberg, Sir Geoffrey
Nicholls, Patrick


Fletcher, Alexander
Norris, Steven


Fookes, Miss Janet
Onslow, Cranley


Forman, Nigel
Oppenheim, Phillip


Forsyth, Michael (Stirling)
Ottaway, Richard


Fowler, Rt Hon Norman
Page, Sir John (Harrow W)


Fraser, Peter (Angus East)
Page, Richard (Herts SW)


Freeman, Roger
Parris, Matthew


Freud, Clement
Pawsey, James


Galley, Roy
Peacock, Mrs Elizabeth


Gardner, Sir Edward (Fylde)
Penhaligon, David


Garel-Jones, Tristan
Percival, Rt Hon Sir Ian


Gorst, John
Pollock, Alexander


Gow, Ian
Porter, Barry


Gower, Sir Raymond
Powell, William (Corby)


Greenway, Harry
Powley, John


Griffiths, Sir Eldon
Prentice, Rt Hon Reg


Hamilton, Hon A. (Epsom)
Price, Sir David


Hamilton, Neil (Tatton)
Pym, Rt Hon Francis


Hampson, Dr Keith
Rathbone, Tim


Hargreaves, Kenneth
Renton, Tim


Harris, David
Rhodes James, Robert


Harvey, Robert
Rhys Williams, Sir Brandon


Haselhurst, Alan
Ridley, Rt Hon Nicholas


Hayhoe, Rt Hon Barney
Ridsdale, Sir Julian


Hayward, Robert
Rifkind, Rt Hon Malcolm


Heddle, John
Roberts, Wyn (Conwy)


Hickmet, Richard
Robinson, Mark (N'port W)


Hicks, Robert
Roe, Mrs Marion


Higgins, Rt Hon Terence L.
Ross, Stephen (Isle of Wight)


Hind, Kenneth
Rossi, Sir Hugh


Hogg, Hon Douglas (Gr'th'm)
Rost, Peter


Holt, Richard
Rowe, Andrew


Howarth, Alan (Stratf'd-on-A)
Ryder, Richard


Howell, Ralph (Norfolk, N)
Sackville, Hon Thomas


Howells, Geraint
Sainsbury, Hon Timothy


Irving, Charles
Sayeed, Jonathan


Jessel, Toby
Shaw, Giles (Pudsey)


Johnson Smith, Sir Geoffrey
Shaw, Sir Michael (Scarb')


Johnston, Sir Russell
Shepherd, Colin (Hereford)


Kennedy, Charles
Shersby, Michael


Key, Robert
Silvester, Fred


King, Roger (B'ham N'field)
Skeet, Sir Trevor


Kirkwood, Archy
Smith, Tim (Beaconsfield)


Knowles, Michael
Soames, Hon Nicholas


Lang, Ian
Speller, Tony


Lawrence, Ivan
Spencer, Derek


Lennox-Boyd, Hon Mark
Spicer, Jim (Dorset W)


Lester, Jim
Squire, Robin


Lewis, Sir Kenneth (Stamf'd)
Stanbrook, Ivor


Lightbown, David
Stanley, Rt Hon John


Lloyd, Peter (Fareham)
Steel, Rt Hon David


Lord, Michael
Stern, Michael


Lyell, Nicholas
Stevens, Lewis (Nuneaton)


McCurley, Mrs Anna
Stewart, Allan (Eastwood)


MacKay, Andrew (Berkshire)
Stewart, Andrew (Sherwood)


MacKay, John (Argyll &amp; Bute)
Stradling Thomas, Sir John


Maclean, David John
Sumberg, David


Maclennan, Robert
Tapsell, Sir Peter


McQuarrie, Albert
Taylor, John (Solihull)


Major, John
Temple-Morris, Peter


Malins, Humfrey
Terlezki, Stefan


Malone, Gerald
Thomas, Rt Hon Peter


Maples, John
Thompson, Donald (Calder V)


Marlow, Antony
Thompson, Patrick (N'ich N)


Mather, Carol
Thornton, Malcolm


Merchant, Piers
Thurnham, Peter


Meyer, Sir Anthony
Townend, John (Bridlington)


Miller, Hal (B'grove)
Twinn, Dr Ian


Mills, Iain (Meriden)
van Straubenzee, Sir W.


Mills, Sir Peter (West Devon)
Vaughan, Sir Gerard


Mitchell, David (Hants NW)
Waddington, David


Moate, Roger
Walden, George





Wall, Sir Patrick
Winterton, Mrs Ann


Wallace, James
Winterton, Nicholas


Waller, Gary
Wolfson, Mark


Ward, John
Woodcock, Michael


Wardle, C. (Bexhill)
Yeo, Tim


Warren, Kenneth
Young, Sir George (Acton)


Watson, John
Younger, Rt Hon George


Wells, Bowen (Hertford)



Wells, Sir John (Maidstone)
Tellers for the Ayes:


Whitfield, John
Mr. Tony Durant and


Wiggin, Jerry
Mr. Francis Maude.


Wilkinson, John





NOES


Abse, Leo
Gourlay, Harry


Adams, Allen (Paisley N)
Hamilton, James (M'well N)


Anderson, Donald
Hamilton, W. W. (Fife Central)


Archer, Rt Hon Peter
Harrison, Rt Hon Walter


Ashley, Rt Hon Jack
Haynes, Frank


Atkinson, N. (Tottenham)
Heffer, Eric S.


Bagier, Gordon A. T.
Hogg, N. (C'nauld &amp; Kilsyth)


Banks, Tony (Newham NW)
Holland, Stuart (Vauxhall)


Barnett, Guy
Home Robertson, John


Barron, Kevin
Hoyle, Douglas


Beckett, Mrs Margaret
Hughes, Robert (Aberdeen N)


Bell, Stuart
Hughes, Sean (Knowsley S)


Bennett, A. (Dent'n &amp; Red'sh)
Janner, Hon Greville


Bidwell, Sydney
John, Brynmor


Boothroyd, Miss Betty
Jones, Barry (Alyn &amp; Deeside)


Boyes, Roland
Kaufman, Rt Hon Gerald


Brown, Gordon (D'f'mline E)
Lambie, David


Brown, Hugh D. (Provan)
Lamond, James


Brown, N. (N'c'tle-u-Tyne E)
Leadbitter, Ted


Buchan, Norman
Leighton, Ronald


Caborn, Richard
Lewis, Terence (Worsley)


Callaghan, Rt Hon J.
Litherland, Robert


Campbell-Savours, Dale
Lloyd, Tony (Stretford)


Canavan, Dennis
McCartney, Hugh


Carter-Jones, Lewis
McDonald, Dr Oonagh


Clark, Dr David (S Shields)
McNamara, Kevin


Clarke, Thomas
McTaggart, Robert


Clay, Robert
Madden, Max


Clelland, David Gordon
Mallon, Seamus


Clwyd, Mrs Ann
Marek, Dr John


Cocks, Rt Hon M. (Bristol S)
Marshall, David (Shettleston)


Cohen, Harry
Martin, Michael


Conlan, Bernard
Mason, Rt Hon Roy


Cook, Robin F. (Livingston)
Maxton, John


Corbyn, Jeremy
Maynard, Miss Joan


Craigen, J. M.
Meacher, Michael


Crowther, Stan
Michie, William


Cunliffe, Lawrence
Mikardo, Ian


Cunningham, Dr John
Millan, Rt Hon Bruce


Davis, Terry (B'ham, H'ge H'I)
Miller, Dr M. S. (E Kilbride)


Deakins, Eric
Mitchell, Austin (G't Grimsby)


Dewar, Donald
Morris, Rt Hon A. (W'shawe)


Dobson, Frank
Morris, Rt Hon J. (Aberavon)


Dormand, Jack
Oakes, Rt Hon Gordon


Dubs, Alfred
O'Brien, William


Duffy, A. E. P.
O'Neill, Martin


Dunwoody, Hon Mrs G.
Orme, Rt Hon Stanley


Eadie, Alex
Park, George


Eastham, Ken
Parry, Robert


Edwards, Bob (W'h'mpt'n SE)
Pavitt, Laurie


Evans, John (St. Helens N)
Pendry, Tom


Ewing, Harry
Pike, Peter


Fatchett, Derek
Powell, Raymond (Ogmore)


Faulds, Andrew
Prescott, John


Field, Frank (Birkenhead)
Redmond, Martin


Fields, T. (L'pool Broad Gn)
Rees, Rt Hon M. (Leeds S)


Fisher, Mark
Richardson, Ms Jo


Flannery, Martin
Roberts, Ernest (Hackney N)


Forrester, John
Robertson, George


Foster, Derek
Rogers, Allan


Foulkes, George
Rowlands, Ted


Fraser, J. (Norwood)
Sheerman, Barry


Freeson, Rt Hon Reginald
Shore, Rt Hon Peter


Godman, Dr Norman
Short, Mrs R.(W'hampt'n NE)


Golding, John
Skinner, Dennis


Gould, Bryan
Smith, C.(Isl'ton S &amp; F'bury)






Smith, Rt Hon J. (M'ds E)
Wardell, Gareth (Gower)


Snape, Peter
Wareing, Robert


Soley, Clive
Welsh, Michael


Spearing, Nigel
Wigley, Dafydd


Stewart, Rt Hon D. (W Isles)
Williams, Rt Hon A.


Stott, Roger
Wilson, Gordon


Strang, Gavin
Winnick, David


Thomas, Dafydd (Merioneth)
Young, David (Bolton SE)


Thomas, Dr R. (Carmarthen)



Thompson, J. (Wansbeck)
Tellers for the Noes:


Thorne, Stan (Preston)
Mr. Don Dixon and


Tinn, James
Mr. Allen McKay.


Torney, Tom

Question accordingly agreed to.

Northern Ireland (Local Government)

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. Richard Needham): I beg to move,
That the Local Government (Temporary Provisions) (Northern Ireland) Order 1986 (S.I. 1986, No. 221), dated 12th February 1986, a copy of which was laid before this House on 13th February, be approved.
This order was made on 12 February 1986 at a meeting of the Privy Council under the urgent procedure as provided for in schedule 1, paragraph 1(4)(b), of the Northern Ireland Act 1974. The urgent procedure requires the order to be approved by resolution of both Houses within 40 days after the date on which the order was made, if the order is to continue in force.
Hon. Members will be aware that since September 1985 Unionist-controlled district councils in Northern Ireland have been adjourning, first, in protest about the presence of Sinn Fein members on councils and now because of the Anglo-Irish agreement. By the end of January, early February of this year, it was clear that the adjourning of councils would put at risk the striking of district rates for 1986–87. The House is aware that under the provisions of local government legislation in Northern Ireland there are three specific functions which must be exercised by councils themselves and cannot be delegated either to officers of councils or to a committee of the council. These functions relate to the striking of rates, the borrowing of money and land transactions. The failure to strike a rate is a clear indication that Unionist-controlled councils intend to escalate their action against the Government's policy. In these circumstances, the Government's first priority has to be the protection of services and jobs and it was for this reason that on 12 February we requested the Privy Council to make this order. I made clear at that time that
This precautionary step is being taken because the Government is not prepared to allow citizens and ratepayers in any district council area to be deprived of those services and facilities to which they are entitled, nor to allow the jobs of council employees to be put at risk through the actions of councillors.
The House may be aware that there are default powers already existing in local government legislation in Northern Ireland. These powers would be insufficient to secure the uninterrupted delivery of local services, however, since they require a failure to exercise a function or a breakdown in service before action can be taken, and such action would take several weeks to complete. As it has now been indicated by some Unionist councillors that they wish to cause maxirnum disruption to local government, it would clearly be irresponsible not to take additional powers to minimise the damage that could be done either to the public or to the employees of the councils. That is the main reason why the Government are seeking the approval of the House to these new powers.
I should tell the House that we now have a situation where a majority within Belfast city council has deliberately defied the rulings of the High Court, where 18 councils, including Belfast, have deliberately defied a direction from the Department of the Environment to make a district rate, having earlier already decided to break the law by not striking a rate by the due date, and where these same councils continue to adjourn or suspend meetings, thereby threatening services in these council areas.
If I may now turn to the main provisions in the order, hon. Members will see from article 3 that, if it appears that a council has failed or is unable or unwilling to exercise duly and effectually any of its functions, the Department of the Environment could make an order which would suspend that council and appoint other persons to assume responsibility for the affairs in that council area. I think it important to emphasise that, since this is a measure of the last resort, the Government would also want to ensure that any application of these powers would not be permanent. Hon. Members will therefore see that there are provisions for the order to be revoked if circumstances subsequently changed and councillors were willing to resume normal business. It is also important to draw the attention of the House to paragraph (2) of article 3, since this would give the power for the suspension from all other public bodies to which a councillor has been appointed or elected by virtue of his membership of a district council. It would be anomalous to suspend district councillors from their council activities and not at the same time consider their suspension from those other public bodies on which they represent local council interests. The remaining provisions in article 3 are provisions which follow from the suspension of councillors and their replacement by others. These powers will ensure that those persons appointed to look after the interests in any council area have the full authority of the law to continue to exercise all functions previously exercised by the council. This would include the modification of any transferred provisions.
Paragraphs (7) and (8) are designed during direct rule to preserve the position of the Assembly if legislative powers were devolved to it. While direct rule continues, they are modified by schedule 1 to the Northern Ireland Act 1974 which suspends the requirement to lay such orders before the Assembly in its present consultative form.
Hon. Members will see from article 4 that the legislation will remain in force until 31 May 1988 but could, if necessary, be extended for periods not exceeding one year until 1991; that is, for a five-year period in all.
The Government will not be deflected from their objective of safeguarding those services in Northern Ireland which are a fundamental entitlement in any society. The Government have been patient over a period of months during which local councils have not been meeting. The stage has now been reached where it has proved necessary to seek these additional powers as a contingency in order to be in a position to secure the provision of services and to protect jobs. I hope that these powers will not have to be used, but I can assure hon. Members and the people of Northern Ireland that, if it proves necessary as a measure of last resort to take this step, the Government are prepared to do so. I should like to remind Unionist councillors that the functions provided by their council, such as burials, refuse collection and the operation of leisure facilities, are for the benefit of all sections of the community. I naturally wish that these important local services should remain under the control of local elected representatives, but if this proves to be impossible the Government must be certain that they can step in to protect innocent members of the community.
I have explained to the House the background against which the Government have decided to introduce these new powers. I have outlined the main reasons why we find

it necessary to seek these powers and have given a summary of their intent. I am sure that hon. Members will agree that our action is justified in the circumstances, and recognise that the powers will be used only if it proves essential.
I commend the order to the House.

Mr. Stuart Bell: This debate must be set in the context not only of the Anglo-Irish agreement but of the Unionist reaction to it. For it is that reaction which has led to 18 Unionist-controlled councils in Northern Ireland systematically adjourning, systematically turning their elected faces to the wall, and declining not only to set a rate but to care for the majority community which elected them to do just that. It is not that those Unionist councils are unaware of their duties, as the Minister explained. 'All of them have been directed by the Department of the Environment to set a rate. All of them have, in effect, refused.
In one case, that of Belfast city council, the council has been ordered to do so by the Court of Appeal. But Belfast city council has closed its ears to the counsels of the law. The only law that appears to have any significance for those Unionist councillors who hold the majority in the 18 councils that have refused to set a rate—eight other councils which are not Unionist-controlled have set a rate—is the law of rhetoric or, rather, the law of King Lear—
I will do such things,—
What they are yet I know not,—but they shall be
The terrors of the earth.
We have seen several such "terrors" since the signing of the agreement. Faced for the first time with an Anglo-Irish agreement that agreed ways should be sought to enhance security co-operation between the Governments of the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland, what did the Unionist leadership do? It organised a march on Belfast city hall. Faced with an Anglo-Irish agreement which led to the Republic acceding to the European convention on terrorism, what did the Unionist leadership do? It called for a series of by-elections throughout Northern Ireland, saw its vote fall, and found that one of its
Members of Parliament lost his seat.
Faced with an agreement that affirmed that any changes in the status of Northern Ireland would come about only with the consent of a majority of the people of Northern Ireland—an obligation to be lodged with the United Nations—the Unionist leadership called for a day of protest which led to violence on the streets of Belfast; a violence that winged its way round the world and was seen on television screens in the United States of America at the very time when its Senate and Congress were discussing $250 million of aid for Northern Ireland and the border areas. We saw the work force at Harland and Wolff pulled out at a time when three vessels are up for contract with the Ministry of Defence, and when an assurance of political stability was sought. There was a call for the suspension of the very agreement that seeks to add a sense of security to the lives of all who live in Northern Ireland. None of these measures has had the slightest impact upon the Anglo-Irish agreement.
To add to the irrelevance of Unionist reaction, we are debating this order, which would give the Government powers to send in commissioners, on the very day that there has been a further intergovernmental conference in


accordance with the agreement. I am not entirely sure whether Lear would turn in his Shakespearean grave, but those who believe in the unity of the United Kingdom must be concerned that the attitude of the Unionists, the Unionist reaction, the Unionist response, the Unionists' turn to violence and intimidation, is likely to sunder the United Kingdom more than any IRA bullet, bomb or other act of aggression. The sight of Sinn Fein councillors voting to strike rates in their communities, while the Unionists seek to adjourn business, must be particularly galling for those who have long espoused the Unionist cause.
Those who believe in local democracy and who believe that local democracy should serve local people, that rates are set for services, and that services are there for people must feel a particular sadness when, on a small scale, Unionist leaders and elected representatives withdraw their consent and their representation in order to make their own people suffer more. For example, and it is only one example, some 40 jobs may be lost and a variety of community services brought to an end on 31 March because of Unionist non-co-operation at local level.
The Belfast Telegraph has reported that in east Belfast a clean-up programme could go, with the loss of 27 jobs, jobs created under the Action for Community Employment programme. Belfast city council has until Friday of this week to decide on grants for community groups for the 1986–87 financial year. The members of the council have been too busy to do that because they have been considering whether there should be a banner reading "Ulster Says No" on the town hall; that is more important to them than saying yes to renewal of community programmes. If no decision is made by the council, all the community groups depending on such grants will have run out of money by 31 March.
When an approach was made by the community groups to the appropriate executive in the Belfast town hall, he suggested three courses of action. The first was that an approach be made to a bank to negotiate a loan. This is impossible because, since most are charities, they cannot legally and knowingly run up deficits. This course of action was a non-starter. The second was to serve redundancy notices for 31 March, and I am saddened to have to say that most have now done this. We may here have shades of Liverpool, but whereas the Labour party was the first to squeal and shout at the treatment of the workforce of Liverpool, it is equally right that we should be concerned about what is happening to community workers in Northern Ireland.
The third alternative for these community groups was that the staff should be asked to stay on voluntarily from the 31 March. This alternative to firing people is just as bad, for they are condemned to work without pay because of the irresponsibility of Unionist-controlled councils. One asks them to run up bills and not to make mortgage payments because elected councillors turn their faces from the tasks that they were elected to perform. One brings local government into disrepute. One brings one's own principles to desuetude for an abstract principle of opposition to an agreement that guarantees one's rights but is not remotely concerned with how families can survive when the breadwinner does not work—or, in this case, works but is not paid—because a council declines to strike a rate.
Some 25 groups in Belfast alone will suffer as a consequence of this default of the Unionist-controlled council. Other workers funded from elsewhere will lose

their jobs if their organisations collapse. Further workers on Action for Community Employment schemes administered by the community organisations will also lose their jobs. The sum involved in relation to these groups is £129,850 for next quarter, or a total for the year of £389,550. The problem is not that decisions have been taken not to fund, but that decisions to allocate funding will not be taken in time. Seven directly funded resource centres will close. Seven other directly funded community centres will also close. The funding for these groups amounts to £79,600 a quarter. Some 27 full-time and 10 part-time workers will be affected. All 14 groups are on annual block grants from Belfast city council.
A further 11 groups in receipt of grant funding will be seriously affected. Four community relations projects will be placed in jeopardy, together with another seven: the Association of Local Advice Centres, the women's education project, the north Belfast resource centre computer project, the Workers' Educational Association sixties-plus unit, Trinity technical aid, Northern Ireland, the conservation volunteer urban unit and a community education project. These 11 groups receive their funding through the Belfast area needs programme. The money is provided by the Department of Education, but the city council can claim it from the Department only after it has been spent. The money involved—£50,250 for the last quarter of 1985–86—should have been claimed from the Department last Friday to cover the period from January to March 1986. It was not claimed, so, although the money is available, it will not reach the groups which need it most. For these 11 groups a total of nine full-time jobs are threatened, along with a number of ACE posts. The legal responsibility for community work was handed over to district councils in 1976, and the Department of Education has said that it cannot and will not interfere.
It has always been a part of the Unionist case that there should be true integration with the rest of the United Kingdom. It has long been espoused by the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell). I am sure he will not begrudge my telling the House that Down council has actually set a rate—an 8p rise in the pound, which has put up the rates by 18 per cent.
But who would wish to give more powers to local councillors who then proceed to walk away from them? Are the Unionists fully aware of what they are doing to public opinion in this country, even in so minor a matter as the equivalent of parish councils setting a rate? Who would want to give them devolved powers over education, health, and fire services, if, for a political purpose, a political gain as they perceive it, they would withdraw their members from the council chambers, adjourn business and walk away? Even Pontius Pilate washed his hands before doing so.
The Unionist dream of integration, of giving more powers to local councils, must be even more remote as the British public gradually understands what withdrawal of consent means to the average, ordinary man and woman of Northern Ireland: a threat to services, a threat to jobs, disrespect for the law, and, if the Unionists had their way, anarchy.
The recital that I have given of Belfast city council's treatment of community programmes is mirrored throughout Northern Ireland. All Unionist-controlled councils are putting their voluntary organisations in the same position, although the crisis has come to a head sooner in Belfast because the court declared ultra vires the


town clerk's acting and taking decisions on behalf of the council. In other councils, the town clerks are still acting. Some of the non-Belfast councils, however, have been boycotting for an extended period, dating from the protests against Sinn Fein. Craigavon borough council first adjourned in November 1985 and has made no payments to voluntary groups since.
The immediate impact outside Belfast is lessened by the fact that no community group jobs are wholly funded by Unionist-controlled councils. Ultimately, however, the effect will be the same, as groups are denied funding and gradually bleed to death. What is happening in Belfast is only a microcosm of what is in store for the next financial year, and we urge the Government to remedy the situation now before there is irrevocable damage.
In a statement on 10 February, when he was talking of emergency legislation, the Minister said that it had been necessary to seek these powers to ensure that there was no breakdown in the provision of local government services, and to protect the jobs of council employees. He described the measure as a precautionary step because the Government were not prepared to allow citizens and ratepayers in any district area to be deprived of those services and facilities to which they are entitled, nor to allow the jobs of council employees to be put at risk through the action of councillors. The Minister had in mind the burial of the dead, the collection of refuse, the maintenance of public health and the operation of major leisure facilities.
What we have in mind is the community programmes, those who work in them, and those in the community who benefit from them. While we understand the Government's reluctance to send in commissioners too early, and accept that that should be a last resort, we ask the Minister to direct his attention to the community programmes and to those who are in them. We suggest, respectfully, that he directs his mind immediately to those issues.
No one wishes to disturb the balance of a local democracy or unduly to interfere with the powers of those who have been elected. But at the same time jobs should not and cannot be put at risk. It is shameful that Unionist councils have turned their backs on community services and on those who work in them. For that reason we urge the Government not to be intimidated on the ground by Unionist rhetoric or Unionist leaders; to let the commissioners go in to protect jobs and services; and not to let the people of Northern Ireland again suffer the futilities and barrenness of Unionist policy. We want the Government to act on these matters. We shall not divide the House tonight, but we urge the Government to act promptly when the order is placed on the statute book.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: The easy philippic to which the House has just listened will bring no benefit to any section or interest in Northern Ireland or Great Britain, including the Government. When the Secretary of State wrote on 13 February to my right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Molyneaux) announcing the order he said:
I understand the depth of feeling which exists.
Alas, would that that were so. It is perfectly clear that neither the Secretary of State nor the Government have

comprehended the depth of feeling that exists. If they had, the Secretary of State would not have perpetrated the solecism of fixing the debate on a day when in Northern Ireland the Anglo-Irish conference is meeting, and of sending almost the most junior of junior Ministers in the Northern Ireland Office to present the order to the House. He would have realised the inherent offensiveness of that step, to which, I presume, he was blind because I do not imagine that it was intentional. It is simply an evidence of the continuing incomprehension.
The Minister would also understand why, having done that, my right hon. Friend the Member for Lagan Valley and some of my other hon. Friends thought it would be more in the interests of their constituents in Northern Ireland and of the Union that they should be in the Province today and this evening, rather than in the debate. He would also have understood—this is what the debate is about—[Interruption.] If the hon. Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Mr. Hogg) wishes to intervene, perhaps he would get on his feet and let us hear his remarks instead of muttering under his breath. I see that he is not responding to my challenge. If the Secretary of State had understood the depth of feeling, he would understand what it is that brings the debate about, and that in the eyes of hundreds of thousands of people in Northern Ireland, ever since 15 November 1985, the Government of Northern Ireland are essentially a Government who are no longer that of the Crown in Parliament, but one effectively shared with the Ministers and Government of another country.
That being the sense shared by those councillors with large numbers of their fellow countrymen, they could not in honour continue to participate, even in the minimal form of government which is represented by the local government of district councils as it exists today in Northern Ireland—a form of government, which, not inaccurately, was described just now as being more or less equivalent to that of a district council.
Nevertheless, in the eyes of those men that was part of the government of the Province which had ceased to be governed as part of the United Kingdom, and where genuine authority and influence lay outside this country. That is why they declined to take part in or responsibility for even that vestigial part of the government of Northern Ireland. In those circumstances, it was right and necessary that the Government should take up the responsibility.
The Government have, under existing legislation, the power to make a rate. But I do not criticise the fact that the Government have taken power at the same time effectively to administer these local government services. They must take responsibility for that for which elected persons in those 18 councils no longer in honour feel that they can take responsibility. That is what is going on, and that is what lies behind the order.
It may come as some surprise to any hon. Member uninterested or unacquainted with Northern Ireland if he were in the Chamber this evening to know how vestigial the powers of district councils are. The Government are already directly responsible, although they do not always admit their responsibility to the House, for the major services which are administered in the rest of the United Kingdom by elected authorities. Only a small addition to those powers for which the Government are already responsible will be made if the order is put into effect. Indeed, the district rate covers only the penumbra of services. The general rate, which corresponds to the rate


paid in a corresponding part of the United Kingdom and supports the main services, is already fixed by the Government on the Government's responsibility.
I hope that if the order is put into effect, and I believe that it will be, the Government will accept their full, direct responsibility to the House for the details, as well as the policy, of all the elements of administration which then lie within their control. I hope that they will be prepared in the House to answer debate and questions on the details, as well as the policy of those services. Hitherto they have sought to hide behind the appointed boards for health, housing and education. I hope that they will not behave in that way in relation to the services which they will take over under the order from local government.
I believe that good can come from evil, and that the extremity to which the Government's mistake of 15 November is inexorably leading can have a good result, and lead the House and the Government to face the realities in Northern Ireland, instead of constantly hiding and running from them. Regarding local government—this was touched on by the hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell)—there is no complete membership of this United Kingdom without full enjoyment of local government as it is enjoyed in the rest of the United Kingdom. There have been arguments and suggestions that only the vestigial powers that exist at present can safely be left with elected authorities. Otherwise, there might be misadministration and discrimination.
This order is a reminder that, as a learned judge remarked not long ago, local government is the creature of statute and local government is ultimately the creature of central Government. The ultimate responsibility for what is done in local government inexorably returns to and rests with central Government.
It is perfectly feasible that those councillors in Northern Ireland—and I know them well—of both political majorities and colours are capable of administering far more than the trivial services that are at present within their scope. It is perfectly possible for them to be entrusted with the range of services which elected councillors supervise and administer in the rest of the United Kingdom. What we are doing tonight is a reminder that it is wholly within the powers of Government to ensure that such a transfer of responsibility is not misused but is controlled and does not lead to any of the results which have been feared.
This is not an order that any of us would welcome. Rather we regard it as inevitable. Nevertheless, there lies behind the order, and I say so here tonight, the possibility that the day will come when the people of Northern Ireland will be endowed, as they are entitled to be endowed, with the right to local administration of those services which are locally administered in the rest of the United Kingdom. The claim of the people of Northern Ireland, as long as they are part of the United Kingdom, to be administered like the rest of the United Kingdom in all respects is in the end an indefeasible claim. That claim sooner or later will extend to local government.

Mr. Seamus Mallon: The right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) has spoken four times about the depth of feeling which exists in Northern Ireland, and which is not appreciated here. I assure him that I have seen that depth of feeling. I have

seen it in practical terms. I saw it last Monday. I saw it no later than yesterday. A brave and courageous nursing officer, who tried to get her staff into a hospital at Craigavon, had her leg broken by people who 'were suffering from a depth of feeling. One of my constituents was taken to Craigavon hospital with his head split by a brick, which had resulted from a depth of feeling. I know that depth of feeling; I know the result of it. I assure the right hon. Member for South Down that there is at least one person here who knows that depth of feeling and knows the effect of it.
It is a matter of regret that, as we face all our problems in Northern Ireland, the democratically elected councils throughout the north of Ireland have to be dealt with in this manner. I speak as a member of Armagh district council which will no longer operate when this order has been put into effect. When the councils were formed, we regarded them as having great potential. We regarded them as the nursery beds for partnership and reconciliation on decisions on a minor scale. We hoped that that nursery element would grow into the politics of the north of Ireland. However, like most other things, because of the depth of feeling, that opportunity was lost.
What have we seen? We have seen discrimination which has been proved in the courts of Ireland. I ask hon. Members not to take my word for it, but to look up the court records. We have seen the way in which councils have been used for political reasons. The Minister of State said that this was the second time that Unionist councillors had withdrawn from councils. It is not. It is the third time. On that previous occasion, as a member of a council and as a citizen, I attested to the court the right of Unionists to stop doing council business. I lost, and it cost me a great deal of money. After three attempts, I hope that the Department will now grapple with this problem.
I am loth to speak in political terms, but I find it difficult not to do so. I prefer to consider the merits of councils, their functions and effects, but it is not as simple as that because they are being used as political tools, not for the first time, but for the third time since 1973–-we must all realise the essence of this matter—to challenge the sovereignty of this Parliament, as we saw on the streets of Northern Ireland last Monday. The Unionists in the north of Ireland are claiming quasi-sovereignty -independence for Northern Ireland within the British context. Somehow they are seeking to have their cake and eat it.
Those in the House who are sincere, committed Unionists must realise that this is the essence of the Unionist revolt. That is why district councils are being treated as they are by Unionists on those councils.
The hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell) has rightly itemised some of the effects that this will have. Yesterday, I spoke to people employed by Belfast city council in the resource centres. There will be no community service budgeting for those centres, and there will be no money for the neighbourhood development schemes in Belfast. Such schemes are crucial in a divided city where a concrete wall has to be built between the Protestant and Catholic sections. The neighbourhood development schemes and councils will not be able to operate. The wages of the people in the centres will not be paid, and there will be no cash for the resource centres. The Action for Community Employment schemes will come to a halt. New employment will therefore not be


created through the admirable ACE schemes. The clerks in the councils do not have it within their power to fund those resource centres any further.
We are entering a situation where people will lose their jobs and the food off their plates so that others can demonstrate their depth of feeling. That will be one of the net results. Another net result, which I fear as a councillor, will be the lack of services to the public. When I write to the district councils on behalf of constituents, I do not even get the courtesy of a reply. Councillors do not have the right of consultation to which they are entitled, especially with the Department of the Environment in relation to roads, housing and planning permission. That shows the way in which the electorate is being put at a tremendous disadvantage. This form of elected democracy, which should be the basis of the most intimate relationship with the community, is suffering and all that important work is going by the board.
Remarkable cuts in the housing programme, which councillors should examine and influence, are being swept through. Armagh district council will not furnish me with details of the housing programme. It will not send planning schedules. Therefore, people who, like me, wish to carry on as councillors do not have the facility to do so. Must my democratic rights and those of my constituents be sacrificed so that the depth of feeling can continue to express itself?

Mr. William Cash: I am listening to the hon. Gentleman with great interest. Will he explain whether the refusal to communicate with him is a deliberate act and, if so, who is responsible for it, as I find what he is saying extremely disturbing?

Mr. Mallon: In their wisdom, Unionist councils—they are the majority—decided to hand over all powers of administration to the chairmen of the councils, who could instruct the clerks to the councils. For the whole of the Armagh district council area, one man, who I saw manning the barricades showing his depth of feeling last Monday, has power over every item of council business and decides whether I shall get a reply to my letters.
The service to the public is vital and initiatives, if there are any, of some council officers will be frozen because they will not run the risk of taking decisions for which they might have to answer. They have to consider whether there will be retrospective authorisation of decisions. Council clerks who want to do their job properly are being put in an impossible position, as are councillors who want to fulfil their role.
The right hon. Member for South Down talked about the depth of feeling of councillors who are bringing district council business to a standstill. He conveniently ignored the fact that there are people in the north of Ireland who want to serve on councils. I am one. There are many others, including the 100 elected members of my party who want to serve their constituents, but they cannot, because the Unionist parties have arbitrarily decided that they will not. The right hon. Gentleman ignored the fact that eight councils are operating well. They have struck rates and are serving their constituents. They all happen to be in areas where there is a Nationalist majority. These are strange times indeed. I belong to a party which was born on the streets in revolt and in the civil rights movement. Unionism has gone down the road that we took

10 years ago and discovered was a cul-de-sac. Can they not learn even from recent history, if not more distant history?
I welcome the prospect of action on district councils at last. I have not seen much action in the past. It is unfortunate that it has been left to individuals to go to the courts at their own expense to test legislation. It was unfortunate that I had to do that. It was unfortunate that individuals from Craigavon and Belfast district council had to test the law. Why did the Department sit back and watch? I should have thought that it was part of its duty to discover legal realities. I hope that the Minister of State will give us some assurance that, as a result of this problem, he will have the legislation under which councils operate in the north of Ireland examined thoroughly, as it is patently faulty.
Because of faulty legislation, councils can be used, just as they have been three times since 1973. The ball is in the court of the Minister and the Department. I ask him to use some courage in that regard. The order provides that, if councillors are suspended, those who serve on area boards will also be suspended from membership of those boards. In those circumstances, it would be only right to appoint people from the councils who wish to serve to redress the imbalance. The Minister should not tell us that he cannot do that because every appointment after election to a council is a nomination by the Minister. He has an opportunity to ensure that democratic representation on those boards continues.
I am aware that the Unionist parties have sent the Minister to Coventry, but that is no reason why he should not speak to the other political parties in Northern Ireland. I remind him of a request that my party made on 19 November 1985 for a meeting to discuss the problems of district councils. We have not yet had a reply. The request has been repeated, but we have still not had a reply. I should have thought that four months was long enough. Is the Minister taking a leaf out of Armagh district council's book and ignoring the request of other parties?
I welcome the order with some regret and for an extraneous reason. If implemented, it will give the Department a chance to do something crucial—to get a worm's eye view of how local government operates in Northern Ireland. It will have an opportunity to see the quality that does not exist in many councils in terms of representation and administration.
The order provides that proper steps should be taken to ensure that councils at administrative level are properly led and administered and not dragged down to the depths by lack of imagination or commitment. The Minister knows what I mean and what I am speaking about. He should get a worm's eye view of what we have to live with in Armagh, Craigavon and many other councils throughout the north of Ireland.
The hon. Member for Middlesbrough started with a quotation from Shakespeare. It is worth remembering that one of the essences of tragedy is that it is self-inflicted. Once again, we have the trauma of people in the north of Ireland inflicting punishment on themselves and others when it could be avoided. There should be no equivocation. The Minister said, "as a contingency" and "if it proves essential". I should have thought that experience of the past five months would have shown that the time for "ifs" and "buts" was over. I, too, would like to quote Shakespeare:
If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well


It were done quickly".

Sir John Biggs-Davison: It was my misfortune to be absent when the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) made his maiden speech, and I am glad to have heard him speak today with force and eloquence. It is right and proper that the voice of Nationalism should be heard in this place. Indeed, it is right that the voice of separatist parties in Wales or Scotland should be heard here. This House is a place where there can be dialogue between Unionism and Nationalism. The Northern Ireland Assembly cannot fulfil that role and I believe that, Ministers are now contemplating its termination.
There is an irony in a member of the Social Democratic and Labour party appealing to the sovereignty of this Parliament. The hon. Gentleman described his party as being born in revolt. I thought that his parry's mission was to throw off the sovereignty of Parliament over Northern Ireland.

Mr. Mallon: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right. I hope that my days here are numbered, as I hope the days here of every representative from Northern Ireland and numbered. As I said in my maiden speech, I want to do that in such a way that we create unity within Ireland without spilling one drop of blood or diminishing one man's rights. As such, while I am a Member of the House I shall treat it with respect and I shall try to present that point of view, but make no mistake about my position.

Sir John Biggs Davison: I hope that it will always be possible for there to be discussion between Unionists and Nationalists in this House.
The Under-Secretary of State who introduced the order made a sad speech because this is a melancholy occasion. As the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh pointed out, the people of Northern Ireland of every faith and opinion now face hardship, inconvenience and danger. The order is the "Local Government (Temporary Provision) (Northern Ireland) Order 1986." "Temporary" is a euphemism for emergency. Northern Ireland, the United Kingdom and this House are in the presence of the largest emergency since the troubles began. We all know whatever we say and however much we whistle to keep up our courage, that the Anglo-Irish agreement has antagonised the most moderate Unionists and the most moderate Unionist councillors. The hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell) quoted "King Lear". I suppose that if by one's policy one drives men mad one is fully entitled to call them mad. That is what is happening today.
I submit to the House that it is time that both Front Benches stopped lecturing and started to listen. When will the day come, which was promised by the Prime Minister and the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, that Unionists will see the benefit of the Hillsborough agreement? When does my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary think that we shall see progress under this agreement towards peace, reconciliation and stability?
The House rarely discusses local government in Northern Ireland and it is sad that now it is obliged to discuss local government it cannot do so in a constructive fashion. The right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) hoped that some good would come out of this evil and that realities in Northern Ireland would now be faced. The reality is that the only practicable constitutional way

forward is that which is constantly neglected and even ridiculed by Ministers — the fullest administrative devolution to local government — analogues to, not identical with, local government in other parts of the United Kingdom. That is the way forward. I invite Ministers to consider that way forward. It might help to mollify an estranged majority in the Province of Northern Ireland.

Mr. Ian Gow: A fortnight ago today the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Molyneaux), the leader of the Ulster Unionist party, and the hon. Member for Antrim, North (Rev. Ian Paisley), the leader of the Democratic Unionist party, had a meeting with my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. After that meeting a statement was issued by the Prime Minister—I do not think that it was an agreed statement—in which she said that she also offered consultations with the Unionist leaders about the arrangements for handling Northern Ireland business in Parliament at Westminster.
I have long felt that this procedure for debating legislation for Northern Ireland, even if the motion which stands in the Prime Minister's name is moved and passed, is most unsatisfactory because we cannot amend the order which is now before us. Therefore, I very much hope that the matter which was discussed a fortnight ago will be resumed and that there will be further discussions about arrangements for handling Northern Ireland business in Parliament at Westminster.
I agree with the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) about the timing of today's debate. It is perfectly understandable that the leader of his party and his hon. Friends wish to be in the Province today. However, I shall allow myself what I hope the right hon Gentleman will not think is an impertinence. I want to say that I hope that the leader of his party and his hon. Friends will participate in this House in future debates which affect not only Northern Ireland but the rest of the United Kingdom and all other matters. I hope to see a return to full representation from the Unionist parties in this place.
The arrangements for this evening's debate, however unsatisfactory, are arrangements which I believe are required by the situation. In my opinion, there was no way in which my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State could have failed to bring forward this Order in Council at this time. However, perhaps even my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary of State will agree that the debate would not be taking place had it not been preceded by the Anglo-Irish agreement of 15 November.
I agree entirely with the right hon. Member for South Down that those who sit on the Treasury Bench still do not understand, or at least give no appearance of understanding, how deep is the feeling of bitterness and resentment about what happened on 15 November. There is no need for my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary to take my word for that. I can understand if my hon. Friend pays no heed to me, but he ought to pay heed to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister. During an interview published in the Belfast Telegraph on 17 December 1985 my right hon. Friend said that the response in Northern Ireland to the Anglo-Irish agreement was "much worse" than had been expected. Was it much worse than my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary expected?
Yes, I think that all Northern Ireland Ministers, if they are honest with themselves, will say that they did not expect the reaction to be as it was. Why did they not expect the reaction which was totally predictable and predicted by others? It was because the advice which was being given by those in the Northern Ireland Office to my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister and to my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs was based on a misunderstanding of the depth of Unionist feeling.
I understand why the order is before the House but I have to say to my right hon. and hon. Friends on the Treasury Bench that one cannot continue to govern a part of this kingdom in a way which is massively and significantly different from the way in which one governs other parts without the consent of the majority of people whom one is governing differently.
I hope that it will not be necessary for this order to remain in force for long, but I can understand the depth of feeling that have led Unionist councillors to take the action that they have taken. I hope that my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will show a little more understanding of those depths of feeling and a greater willingness than has been in evidence since 15 November to acknowledge that it is just possible that Northern Ireland Ministers may be in error.

Mr. Needham: By leave of the House, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I shall reply to the points that have been raised.
The hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell) made a powerful plea for a deeper understanding of ACE schemes and community projects in Northern Ireland. I think that the whole House will agree that it is a pity—I put it no higher than that—that the protest that we so much hoped would be both lawful and peaceful turned out in several instances to be neither. As the hon. Member for Middlesbrough said, in local government, the effect of the unlawful process is to bring into considerable doubt the schemes that are of real benefit to the community.
We have only become fully aware of the problems that have arisen within the past few days, and we are considering them. I go back to what I said earlier—the appointment of commissioners would be a last resort, and grant-aiding community projects is a permissive power available to the councils. We wish to see those permissive powers kept with the councils and used by them, as that is the basis of their functions.
I could hardly be flattered by the comments made by the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) about my position in Northern Ireland. However, I am the Minister responsible for local government and for the protection and provision of services. Therefore, it is right that I should be here to introduce the order and reply to this debate.
I was interested to hear the right hon. Member explain—I understand his point—why his colleagues are not here. In support of something said by my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) I point out to the right hon. Member that I hope it will not be too long before his colleagues return to take up their seats, as I think that I heard him suggest might be the case, so that they can resume their questioning of me and my colleagues with the determination of which I know that they are capable.
When they do so, I humbly suggest that they encourage their colleagues to resume some of their functions on councils, although it can be argued that many of the services that local councils perform, as the right hon. Member for South Down said, are trivial in comparison to many of the functions that local councils or county councils have here. I must agree with the hon. Member for Middlesbrough that it will be even more difficult to persuade Government or Parliament to give greater responsibilities to those councils when at present their councillors appear to be prepared to act outside the law.
Unfortunately, I was not here for the maiden speech of the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) but I have read it and I have had the privilege of listening to him come to the wicket for the second time. Whereas the right hon. Member for South Down hardly flattered me by calling me the most junior of junior Ministers, the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh, by referring to me as the Minister of State for Northern Ireland, has done my ego a great deal of good. All of us—I point out to my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne—understand the depth of feeling in the majority community. Therefore, it is even more necessary that all of us, wherever we are and whatever our position, are careful about the words we use and the tone in which we use them.
The hon. Member for Newry and Armagh said that the ball is in my court. I cannot accept that proposition entirely, but the whole point of local government has to be that the powers that are given to local government are exercised locally. If they are not being conducted properly we have, as a Department, introduced a commissioner of complaints and the local government auditor. We are not "big daddy", and nor is it right that we should be. The hon. Member and some of his colleagues have taken the opportunity of pursuing matters locally through the courts and that, in our judgment, is the way to proceed.

Mr. Nicholas Lyell: Many of our right hon. and hon. Friends are thinking carefully about the depth of feeling. Is my hon. Friend aware that many of us feel that we could understand it better, when we look back on the day of action or strike, if we had been able to see a more spontaneous withholding of consent, if that was what was going to happen, by those in Northern Ireland, and not the widespread intimidation, barricades and bullying that appeared to go on that day, which seemed substantially to fog any true expression of feeling?

Mr. Needham: My hon. and learned Friend is right. The effects of the day of action, and its effects on the British public at large, were traumatic and extremely unfortunate. It has done considerable harm to future investment possibilities in Northern Ireland and to the image of the Loyalist community. That is a tragedy because I know that the vast majority of people in the Unionist and Loyalist community in Northern Ireland are decent, law-abiding and sensible people.
The hon. Member for Newry and Armagh asked about the introduction of commissioners, but I hope that that will not become necessary. If they were to be introduced, all councillors would be suspended. Therefore, it would not be possible to take councillors who are against the boycott and put them on to boards—such a move would not be a particularly good and sensible idea as it would be denying the ballot box by putting into positions of power people who had not been elected to those positions.

Mr. Mallon: I thank the Minister—I go no further this time after promoting him last time—for giving way. However, I have to disagree. Every person who sits on an area board is in the last analysis appointed to it. Some of these people are not elected to district councils or to any other office. If a commissioner is appointed, the councillors who wish to serve on the council are disadvantaged not only in connection with the council but in relation to sitting on an area board. The Minister must clear up that contradiction.

Mr. Needham: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is aware that there are rules governing appointment to boards which vary from one board to another. There are ministerial appointments which take into account the background, experience and professionalism of appointees to those hoards. In other cases many people have to be appointed and the minister and the Department have no say in that under the statute.

Mr. Mallon: Will the Minister confirm that each person who sits on an area board is appointed to that board by the Minister responsible for that relevant board?

Mr. Needham: I think that we are getting into a slightly esoteric argument but the point is that the Minister has no discretion and must accept the people put forward to him from the local authorities or from the organisations under the statute.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: The point that the Minister must clarify is whether the withdrawal, after the appointment of commissioners, of these appointed members from the boards will create vacancies which can be filled by the Minister. The Minister must address himself to that point.

Mr. Needham: I cannot give a definite answer to that question. As I understand it, and I will confirm this later to the right hon. Member for South Down and to the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh the appointments are lost and cannot go to the commissioners and would not fall back to the Minister for appointment. I will find out and write to the right hon. Gentleman and the hon. Gentleman about that.
I apologise to the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh if he has not received a reply to his request to send a deputation to see me. I can assure the hon. Gentleman that in the present circumstances I am only too happy to receive a deputation from anybody. I have been informed that the hon. Gentleman's November or December letter did not arrive and I have replied to the hon. Gentleman's colleague in the last two weeks.
As the only part I have ever played in Shakespeare was the fool in King Lear, I shall adjure from making any quotations. I accept the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne who commented that men who were driven mad become mad. I understand my hon. Friend's point, as it was Lear who drove himself mad.
I must tell the House that as the Minister with responsibility for the environment I do not relish bringing this measure to the House. My hon. Friend the Member for Eastbourne is correct to say that in the Prime Minister's statement following the talks in Downing street one of the offers that was made was to consider the methods by which legislation in Northern Ireland could go through the House. The councils were adjourned because of the Sinn Fein presence before the Anglo-Irish agreement. Nevertheless, I accept that the situation has been subsumed by that.
As I said before, in putting this order to the House, I hope that, we will not have to use it. I hope that in local affairs in Northern Ireland it will be possible, accepting the depth of feeling, for councils to resume their normal business in the not too distant future in the same way as the right hon. Member for South Down has resumed his place in the House.
We all agree that the order should not last too long and that it is an order we would prefer to do without. However, as the Minister responsible for the environment, I have the duty to protect services and jobs if necessary. I therefore commend the order to the House.

Question put and agreed to,

Resolved,
That the Local Government (Temporary Provisions) (Northern Ireland) Order 1986 (S.I. 1986, No. 221), dated 12th February 1986, a copy of which was laid before this House on 13th February, be approved.

Northern Ireland (Appropriation)

The Minister of State, Northern Ireland Office (Dr. Rhodes Boyson): I beg to move,
That the draft Appropriation (Northern Ireland) Order 1986, which was laid before this House on 19th February, be approved.

Mr. Deputy Speaker (Mr. Ernest Armstrong): It might be helpful if I make it clear that the debate on this order may cover all the matters for which Northern Ireland Departments, as distinct from the Northern Ireland Office, are responsible. Police and security are the principal excluded subjects.

Dr. Boyson: The order is being made under paragraph 1 of schedule 1 to the Northern Ireland Act 1974.
The draft order has two purposes. First, it is intended to appropriate the 1985–86 spring Supplementary Estimate. That is dealt with in part I of the schedule that sets out the details, by class and vote, of a further £72·7 million required from the Consolidated Fund of Northern Ireland. That sum is in addition to some £3,056 million which has already been approved by the House for the 1985–86 financial year. It brings the total Estimates provision for 1985–86 to £3,129 million.
Part II of the schedule gives details of the issues for which the vote on account of the £1,365 million for 1986–87 is required. That provision is necessary to enable services to continue until the 1986–87 main Estimates are debated later in the year.
Full details of all the provisions sought in the draft order can be found in two volumes, copies of which have been placed in the Vote Office. These are entitled the "Spring Supplementary Estimates" and the "Statement of Sums Required on Account."
Before going into the details of the extra funds being sought, I should like to say a few words about the general economic position in Northern Ireland and its effect on all of these accounts. The trend for both total industrial production and manufacturing output has until recently remained upward. There is also some encouragement to be gained from the employment figures. In the year to September 1985—the latest period for which information is available—total employees in employment in Northern Ireland fell by 1,490 as against falls of 2,100 and 5,850 in the two previous 12-month periods. Nobody wants an increase in unemployment, but, in the past four or five years, there has been a steady decrease each year in the number becoming unemployed. There is evidence that the numbers of self-employed may be rising. At the last Northern Ireland Question Time, I said that we estimated that there had been an increase of about 7 per cent.—to 85,000—over three years in the number of self-employed people.
Nevertheless, a continuing rise in the supply of labour has been evident. One factor is that the birth rate in Northern Ireland is 36 per cent. higher than the birth rate in Great Britain. Also, the decline in the number of people emigrating means that unemployment remains the major economic problem in the Province. There is no getting away from that.
The Government are making a determined effort to tackle that problem through the job creation efforts of the Industrial Development Board, the Local Enterprise Development Unit and the various training and re-training

schemes. However, the violence and destruction which took place during the strike a week yesterday, which was televised throughout the world, will certainly not help the efforts being made by the IDB, the LEDU and others to bring additional industrial investment into the Province.
I turn now to the provisions of the draft order. In class I, which covers agriculture, token Supplementary Estimates are being taken in both vote 1 and vote 3 to bring some important changes to hon. Members' attention. In vote 1 an increase of £200,000 is sought for the payment of student awards at Loughry, Greenmount and Enniskillen agricultural colleges. This brings these awards into line with other student support arrangements in Northern Ireland. However, additional receipts from board and lodging charges in student halls of residence have more than offset the increased expenditure. This is a book entry in which the figures are moved from one column to another. An additional £600,000 is sought for scientific equipment to test meat for residues, including hormonal content, and for research into the potential of using irradiation for the preservation of food. As about 80 per cent. of meat in Northern Ireland is exported, not only to Great Britain but to the rest of Europe, it is important to consider its hormonal content.
Also within vote 1, an additional £900,000 is required for the milk outgoers scheme to compensate producers who have given up milk production. Farmers in Northern Ireland and Northern Ireland Members are very concerned about the milk quota scheme. This additional £900,000 brings the total provision for payment to milk outgoers to £1·3 million to finance the reallocation of 32 million litres of Northern Ireland quota.
In addition, a further 2·5 million litres have been made available through transfer of direct sales quota. Regrettably, this represents only half of the Northern Ireland tribunal determinations in respect of exceptional hardship claims and allows some limited provision for small producers. I am very conscious of the need to find ways of bridging the gap and bringing Northern Ireland producers into line with their Great Britain counterparts. There may be some hope of solving this difficult problem in the proposed new EC outgoers scheme which is presently under consideration in Brussels. We are all concerned about this.
The second token Supplementary Estimate is in class I, vote 3, where £300,000 from the European Community is being appropriated in aid. These receipts under the urban renewal regulation are in respect of expenditure on drainage infrastructure projects largely in the Belfast urban area.
Turning to class II, the additional provision sought in votes 1 and 2 relate to the activities of the Industrial Development Board. Within vote 1 an extra £518,000 is being sought—£450,000 to meet additional expenditure on factory building and estate development and the balance for increased administration costs. The fact that a further £450,000 is required for factory building is a welcome reflection of increased capital investment by industry this year. This money is required to enable extensions or alterations to be made to a number of buildings to meet the requirements of particular projects. A proportion of the money is used in the development of Northern Ireland's first technology park at Antrim where construction work is well under way. The first phase of the main roadway is nearing completion. The building of two 7,500 sq ft units has begun, with a completion date for the


first of the buildings in July 1986. I am glad to say that interest in the park by industry has been particularly encouraging.
Of the £21–6 million being sought within vote 2, some £20·6 million is required to meet claims for grant assistance arising from the IDB's activities in recent years in promoting and maintaining employment in Northern Ireland. Expansion and modernisation projects recently promoted by the IDB are now coming on stream and beginning to earn their financial assistance. The IDB is continuing to concentrate resources on the priority activities of attracting new investment projects and encouraging the expansion and reorganisation of existing industry. New measures have also been introduced to encourage companies to focus greater attention on marketing.
One of the basic needs of the Province is to find the markets and to make the goods to satisfy them. The new measures include special exercises to increase exports, to maximise local resources and to improve marketing skills. A major initiative designed to encourage industry to adopt a more strategic approach to marketing has been launched. Successful trade missions have already taken place in the United States, Norway, Denmark and Switzerland. Overseas the IDB's promotional activities are concentrated on clearly identified areas, both sectorally and geographically, which offer the greatest potential for sales from the Province to overseas markets.
In class II, vote 3, an additional £1 million is required for the Local Enterprise Development Unit—Northern Ireland's small business agency. I pay tribute to the LEDU which has promoted almost 26,000 jobs since it was set up in 1971. The figure for the last financial year of 4,009 jobs was a record. Viewed against the economic conditions of recent years, that is a considerable achievement which demonstrates not only the potential that exists for small firms in Northern Ireland but the continuing success of the agency's work in promoting development and employment in the Northern Ireland small business sector.
An additional £4 million is sought for the continued support of Belfast shipbuilders Harland and Wolff. This increases the provision for the year to some £36·6 million and highlights once again the Government's recognition of the company's importance to the Northern Ireland economy.
Right hon. and hon. Members will note the significant increase of £20·6 million in the provision for capital investment grants. Changes to this scheme were announced in March 1985 which included a reduction in the overall rate of grant from 30 per cent. to 20 per cent. with effect from 1 May 1985. There has, therefore, been some acceleration of investment by industry to avail itself of the higher rates of grants under the former scheme and to benefit from the higher capital tax allowances which are now being phased out.
In class II, vote 5, the labour market vote, there are three areas seeking extra funds in the current year. First, an additional £1–82 million is required for the youth training programme. This is a direct result of the programme's continued success in attracting into full-time training schemes a large number of 16 and 17-year-olds who would otherwise be unemployed. At the last Northern Ireland Question Time, I cited figures showing that in the current year a higher percentage of those without jobs have opted to join the YTS than in preceding years. That is a

vote of confidence in those working hard on the schemes, as is the fact that more people are getting jobs before they end their training. This year, 57 per cent. of those between 16 and 17 who undertook the one-year course have left to go to jobs. In the previous year, it was 55 per cent., and in the year before that it was 51 per cent. The fact that three out of every five people who join the schemes go directly to employment is a vote of confidence in the schemes. There are still opportunities for employment in Northern Ireland.
Secondly, an additional £1·48 million is required for the training on employer premises scheme, which is designed to help to meet local industries' manpower training requirements and to encourage a planned approach to the training of new recruits. The scheme has proved very attractive to new small firms. This involves the drawing up of a plan by a small firm showing how it will train its new recruits. The plan is then submitted to the Department of Economic Development for approval by its technical assessors. The agreed version covering the extent and period of training is the basis of agreement between the Department and the firm. It is intended to produce a systematic training course which will benefit the firm, the trainees and the Northern Ireland economy. Hon. Members know that comparisons are often made between the amount of training given in other countries—for example, Germany—and in Britain. We should all welcome any increase in training either outside or inside the firm.
Thirdly, class II, vote 5—the action for community employment scheme, better known as ACE—requires an increase of £1–75 million. ACE provides tempora.ray employment for the long-term unemployed. By the end of this financial year the number of employees is expected' to increase from 3,050 to 4,400 and we hope that by June 1986 5,000 will be on the scheme.
We must continue to hope that, with employment in the Province picking up, we shall not need so many schemes of this type. But we must go on the basis that, with the level of unemployment that now exists—and, as I said, the strike a week ago will not help investment there—provision is made so that people need not stay on what we used to call the dole, but have opportunities to retain their self-respect, interest and availability for full employment.
In class IV, vote 1—roads services—net additional provision of £1·6 million is being sought. Increases in expenditure on operation arid maintenance of roads and street lighting and on public liability claims are partly offset by additional receipts from sales of surplus land, the recoupment of VAT and EC receipts under the urban renewal regulation.
In class V, vote 1—housing services—the net increase of £6·1 million is attributable largely to a technical adjustment relating to changes in the pattern of Government recoupment of the Housing Executive's expenditure on house renovation grants and to an increase in the number of grant applications. Within the vote, a fall in demand for the co-ownership scheme in the early part of the year has led to a projected underspend of £4 million in the provision for housing associations. This has been used to offset higher revenue requirements by the Housing Executive, mainly in increased loan charges arising from higher interest rates and borrowing levels.
Further token provision occurs in class VI, votes 1 and 2. In vote 1—water and sewerage services—an increase


of £1·6 million for operational and administration costs is offset by savings in computer costs and additional receipts, mainly from metered and other water charges.
In connection with vote 2—improvement of the environment—right hon. and hon. Members will be aware that major conservation legislation bringing Northern Ireland into step with the rest of the United Kingdom came into operation during the current financial year. This, together with the acceptance by the Government of the main thrust of the recommendations of the Balfour report, "A New Look at the Northern Ireland Countryside," has meant the commitment of an additional £700,000. The result of this expenditure will be to provide better access to the countryside, and thus enable Ulster people and visitors to the Province to enjoy the many natural beauties of the area.

Mr. Seamus Mallon: If the roads are not blocked.

Dr. Boyson: Yes, if the roads are not blocked. Knowing the ingenuity of the people of Northern Ireland and the beauty of the hills—not that I am suggesting that people take to the hills when the roads are blocked—one trusts that tourists to the Province will come not just to see demonstrations in the towns—we would rather that they did not see such things—but to see the beauties of the whole Province.
This is a side of Northern Ireland which, unfortunately, does not receive much attention from those who observe events in the Province. However, from personal experience I assure the House that parts of Northern Ireland are as beautiful and peaceful as areas anywhere in the world. Hon. Members have a responsibility to sell that fact at every opportunity. Indeed, this morning I attended a meeting designed to increase the number of tourists coming to the Province.
I come to education, class VIII, where Supplementary Estimates are being sought in votes 2, 3 and 4. In vote 2, an extra £2·5 million is sought. Just over £1 million of this is to cover the cost of redundancy and compensation payments made to staff prematurely retired under university restructuring arrangements. A further £300,000 is required in the university capital sector, where additional expenditure on computers has been partly offset by slippage on the development of Magee college campus. Hon. Members will recall the decision we made last year on the extension of the Magee college campus—a development that has been widely welcomed in the area.
About £600,000 is required to cover the cost of the 1985 pay award to further education teachers, while £700,000 is sought because some receipts from the European social fund, which were expected in the current year, will not be received until 1986–87. There always seems to be a difficulty in knowing the date when funds of this type will arrive. Accordingly, we must make provision, pending their arrival, to keep everything going. We know that they will come, though sometimes we should like them to arrive faster. There is a saving of £100,000 on the training and interchange of teachers which contributes partly to offsetting the additions required.
Under vote 3, which covers Department of Education miscellaneous services and administration, a token £1,000 is sought. Increases totalling almost £700,000 are required for departmental administration costs—notably the

installation and running costs of computer equipment. These are largely offset by savings on capital grants to district councils resulting from slippage. Substantive provision is also sought for VAT and EC receipts, which are expected to amount to £1·2 million.
Vote 4 is the final education item. Of the total of £900,000 sought, £550,000 is required for increased capital expenditure on essential minor works in schools, including a number of health and safety schemes. The balance of £350,000 is a net figure resulting from a downward revision of estimated receipts, notably those from the European social fund, some of which are not now expected until 1986–87.
On the health and personal social services front, in class IX, vote 1, I draw attention to a new mental health commission and to other significant changes within the vote. Subhead C7 of vote 1 makes provision for the mental health commission, an independent body to be established under the Mental Health (Northern Ireland) Order 1986 to safeguard the rights of patients in mental hospitals. It will not begin work formally until later this year, and the provision in the current financial year is to meet essential advance expenditure.
Now the other changes in class IV, vote 1. It is planned to increase expenditure in this vote by £3·5 million, £1·1 million of which is to assist with the transitional costs of opening the new Belfast city hospital. As hon. Members may know, the first in-patients were admitted to the new hospital early in January, and the transition from old and exhausted buildings to the new hospital is now gathering momentum.
The new hospital took a long time to build. Some sceptics doubted whether it would ever be finished. We can now rejoice in the knowledge that patients have moved in. It is fortunate that the timing of the opening of the hospital should coincide with the debate. That has not been intentional. While some might say that certain unfortunate events are having to be discussed, I am now dealing with a fortunate event. I am glad to say that not only is the new hospital now in operation, but that the new accident and emergency department opened for business this evening, though I hope that no hon. Members of this House will ever have to use it.
Other significant increases in capital expenditure are proposed to take account of essential health and safety work and in grants to voluntary bodies.
Before leaving class IX, I wish to draw hon. Members' attention to an unfortunate discrepancy between part 1 of the schedule to the Appropriation (Northern Ireland) Order 1985 and last year's spring Supplementary Estimates volume. The increase to appropriations in aid for vote 2, class IX was stated in the schedule to the order as £1,489,000, whereas the correct figure of £1 ,389,000 appeared in the 1984–85 spring Supplementary Estimates volume. This regrettable clerical error had no bearing on the actual amount which this House approved should be issued out of the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund or upon the actual level of expenditure by the DHSS. It came to light only after close study. It has not affected anything that has happened in the Province. No one realised until now that an error had been made. Sometimes one wonders what other clerical errors have occurred. Indeed, there may be some in what I am saying tonight. Next year I, if I am so honoured, or some other Minister may have to correct the figures that I have put forward tonight. So far as I know, there are no clerical errors in them —


[Interruption.] I must not be diverted by the hon. Member for Birkenhead (Mr. Field), obviously a militant in disguise as he is sitting below the Gangway. If he is not upsetting the Church of England, he must not be allowed to upset us. I must add that I have the highest regard for the hon. Gentleman, although I do not think that remark will do him any good. If it would help him in his constituency for me to attack him, he only needs to tell me.

Mr. Frank Field: I had intended to wait until the end of the Minister's presentation, but, as he has kindly mentioned my presence, perhaps I may raise a point now. The hon. Gentleman said that Harland and Wolff was getting a subsidy of £36 million. Can he give an undertaking to the House that none of that money will be used to create unfair competition between that shipyard and shipyards in England and Scotland?

Dr. Boyson: I appreciate the hon. Gentleman's constituency concern, as well as his ultimate seeking after truth. I should perhaps have put those in reverse: I appreciate his seeking after truth and also his minor constituency interest.

Mr. Field: Just answer the question.

Dr. Boyson: I shall answer.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: My hon. Friend requires notice.

Dr. Boyson: No, of course not. I answered my hon. Friend on de Lorean and I can answer him again. We are pressing to the end on those legal cases.
I agree entirely with the hon. Member for Birkenhead. Any competition for orders must be fair in every way. We are committed to that in our support for Harland and Wolff. When it competes for orders, including defence orders, with shipyards elsewhere in the United Kingdom, the books will be checked to ensure that the competition is fair. I give the hon. Gentleman a guarantee that that will be done.
A token estimate is also found under class X—social security—in the provision for non-contributory benefits, where increases amounting to almost £3·5 million are offset by savings and increased receipts. In vote 4, an additional sum of about £3 million is sought for administration and miscellaneous services, covering salaries and wages and charges for agency services.
I also draw hon. Members' attention to amendments to the ambits of votes 2 and 4 and consequential changes to sections G and A of the respective votes. The changes clarify the relationship between the Department of Health and Social Services and the Northern Ireland Housing Executive in the payment of housing benefit and were made following criticism by the Comptroller and Auditor General in his report on the 1984–85 appropriation accounts.
In class II, vote 3—other public and common services—£4·1 million is sought mainly to finance the ongoing reorganisation of the efficiency services and the related costs of computer hardware.
Finally, in class XII, vote 1—office and general accommodation services—increased provision of £2 million is required mainly to meet additional costs in the new works and maintenance subheads arising from the repair of bomb damage to Government premises in Belfast.
In these opening remarks I have tried to cover the main features of the draft order and to draw the House's attention to a number of new items of expenditure.

Mr. Nicholas Lyell: Can my hon. Friend help me with other figures? Apart from security matters, how much does it cost to operate government as a whole in Northern Ireland, and what is the tax take in round figures from all sources within the Province?

Dr. Boyson: I welcome questions from the Opposition more than from my hon. Friends. I can answer the second question, but I am not sure about the first. Government expenditure in Northern Ireland is about £4·5 billion. About £1·5 billion, or 37 per cent., is transferred from the United Kingdom. I shall write to my hon. and learned Friend if I am wrong; I shall write to him even more cheerfully if I am right. From my statistics, it seems that the tax take in the Province is about £3 billion.
As for the cost of the administration of the various Departments in the Province, I cannot give my hon. and learned Friend an answer without studying the document. My hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, who will be winding up, is already turning the pages rapidly. I should not be surprised if he, either himself or by inspiration from outside, found the answer to the question. If my hon. and learned Friend wants an answer from me, I shall write to him tomorrow.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: I shall not press my hon. Friend at this time about the cost to the administration in Northern Ireland of pursuing the de Lorean affair. There will be future occasions when. I can do that. I have listened with great interest to the able way in which my hon. Friend has put forward the appropriation measure. Has he any concern about the increase in administration which, as he has indicated to the House, is occurring in the appropriation measure? Under a number of separate headings he has indicated that the cost of administration has been more than was estimated. When all is said and done, the cost of administration is necessary, but it is not passing the real facility and service to the people who need it. People are not necessarily receiving the benefit of the funds and resources which are going into Northern Ireland. Does he have any concern about that and is he prepared to comment?

Dr. Boyson: I shall comment. Obviously administration involves those who are directly serving the public. The ultimate test of administration is: is the public served as it should be? The Department of Finance and Personnel checks carefully the numbers employed and keeps them under tight control. If we add up the changes in the various orders, it is not a great amount. That does not mean that we should not look at them. A man can drown in 6 ft of water as easily as in 20 ft if he is only 5 ft 11 in tall. Much of that is the result of late pay claims. A similar situation arises from the current teachers' pay claim which, on my reckoning, will cost about £20 million, and that will have to be cleared up. However, I shall write to my hon. Friend and give him a full reply dealing with administration as a percentage of the overall budget and of the numbers employed over the past three or four years for his satisfaction and for mine. I must hurry on before hon. Members think of other questions, and that must not be encouraged.
As usual on these occasions, right hon. and hon. Members will wish to express their views on these and


many other matters. I shall listen with great interest to the points raised, and my hon. Friend the Under-Secretary will reply to the debate. The order deals with the basic question of money going to the Province. We do not take that lightly, although I trust that we take it cheerfully.
I commend the draft order to the House for the continued good organisation and administration of the various Departments in Northern Ireland.

Mr. Peter Archer: This debate is an exercise in direct rule. In the previous debate the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Mr. Gow) expressed some criticisms of the way in which Northern Ireland is ruled. Some of us in the House have expressed those same criticisms more than once. A few months ago some discussions took place with a view to improving matters but they were overtaken by more dramatic events.
The House is debating tonight the intensely practical needs of the people of Northern Ireland, and, as the Minister of State has just said, they are important issues. They are not dramatic issues. They are not highly charged or likely to be widely reported and the House is not so well attended for this debate as it was even for the previous debate. If those facts come to the knowledge of the people of Northern Ireland they may conclude that no one here really cares about them. That would be a misleading assessment, but it would be an understandable one. I hope that we shall be able to resume the discussions which were taking place some months ago to ensure that while direct rule survives it becomes a more meaningful process.
I say at once that we are not seeking to oppose the order. The Opposition's complaint is not that the Government are seeking to make provision for services in Northern Ireland but that they are making so little provision. We should have been glad to support a more generous provision. The Government never tire of telling us how much money is provided for Northern Ireland, and, as the Minister said in reply to the hon. and learned Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lyell) a few moments ago, a substantial sum of money is being transferred—£1·5 billion a year. That is not inappropriate because for many years public services in Northern Ireland were allowed to fall tragically behind the equivalent services in other parts of the United Kingdom. We are still engaged in the catching-up process.
In addition, the people of Northern Ireland still have more than their share of contemporary crises. We heard in the previous debate from my hon. Friend the Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell) and from the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) of the many voluntary services into which so many people pour so much dedication and care, in many cases with no financial reward. Those are services which can make vital differences to whole communities. Those people are looking forward with no joy to the end of their contemporary funding.
That situation is not principally of the Government's making but we have ventured to hope that the Government might want to help. The Government's sin is not that of the thieves on the Damascus road. They have not robbed the traveller. If there is a sin—perhaps we shall be able to assess this better when we see what transpires in the immediate future—

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: The right hon. and learned Gentleman means Jericho.

Mr. Archer: I am most grateful to the right hon. Gentleman. He reads my mind better than I know it myself. I did mean the Jericho road. His geography is also better than mine.

Mr. Powell: My scripture is better.

Mr. Archer: I am not sure whether the right hon. Gentleman's scripture is better but on that occasion it was more accurate.
We shall be in a better position to assess the Government's actions in the near future. Their sin is not that of the thieves. If there is a sin, it is the sin of the indifferent officials who passed that way and who saw the problem but passed by on the other side.
For the services to which I now seek to invite the House's attention, the provision is the Government's responsibility. The way in which it is provided is part of a pattern that applies to the whole of the United Kingdom—squalor in the public sector. We are speaking of public provision of services of which once this country could be proud, services which were the envy of the world, but now public provision appears to be seen as the last resort for those who can afford nothing better.
I turn first to part II of the schedule, class VIII, No. 4, grants to education and library boards. In order to live within the Department of Education allocation of £35,460,000 for the coming financial year, the southeastern education and libraries board will have to cut £711,000 from its services. It will be spending that much less than it is spending in the present year. But that is not the full extent of the shortfall because to keep its services at the existing level would require just under £750,000 additional money, so it would have meant reducing the services even if there had been no cut at all. The real reduction, therefore, will be the sum of those two figures, in the region of £1·5 million for the year. That is the southeastern board. The Belfast board is having to reduce its budget by about £1·6 million, and the southern board by about £700,000.
All those are figures on paper, and are the work of accountants. But I have seen what they mean for people in the area of the Belfast board. I have been to some schools whose heads have received instructions from the director to reduce the cleaning bills by taking out of use part of the floor area. It may mean locking away classrooms or other accommodation, it may mean closing off parts of the school and that, it is hoped, will reduce cleaning bills by reducing the cleaners' wages. I was shown what that would mean for education—parts of the school will simply not be in use any more for education purposes.
I saw the other side of the coin. I spoke to ladies who had given years of service as school cleaners. In a number of cases they were the only wage earners remaining in their families because their husbands, sons and daughters were unemployed. When I spoke to them, it was not known whether some of them would be sacked. Some were wondering whether their earnings would be reduced below the figure that would qualify them for pension entitlement so that, having worked in some cases largely in order to be assured of a pension when the time came, they may find those pensions taken away from them. They did not know how the cuts would be made. They knew only that the total


amount to be paid to them collectively as wages would have to be reduced. They felt that the board not only had not prescribed how the reductions should be achieved, but possibly did not greatly care. It may be that was an unfair assessment, and that members of the board cared desperately and were very unhappy about what was happening.
What I suspect may be wholly fair is to say that this all came about because of the Government's proposed cuts. The Government have not demonstrated that they care greatly how those cuts are to be achieved. The Government have not measured the need, they have not calculated how much could be saved from a particular bill without causing harm, they have not assessed whether there was any identifiable slack in the system. The Government just lopped a global figure off the budget for those boards. They have told the boards that this has to be saved from somewhere, irrespective of its effect on the children, on the men and on the women. It may be achieved by reducing the earnings of people who depend upon those earnings, or it may mean sacking people who will have lost all of their earnings, or it may mean cutting the budgets in some other way, but the Government have decreed that those cuts should be made and apparently they have not manifested any concern about how they should be made.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: The right hon. and learned Gentleman has pointed out that the Government have referred to the boards a required quantum of reduction and have left the boards to decide how that is to be achieved. Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman agree with me that since these boards are appointed by Ministers who are agents of the board the Government are just as responsible for the methods by which he cuts are achieved as for the quantum of the cuts themselves? In fact, a sham local government responsibility is placed upon the boards which stand between the Government and their real responsibility for detailed administration decisions.

Mr. Archer: I follow what the right hon. Gentleman has said, but I would not want to associate myself with the view that the members of the boards are virtually robots who are propelled by strings that are pulled by the Government. That would be less than fair to people who make a substantial contribution to public life in Northern Ireland. It would be better if these matters were decided in some way by the elected representatives, and I certainly agree that, when they are given a global figure and told to get on with it, those who give that global figure to them must accept their share of the responsibility.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: Does the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept, as I do, in support of the elected representatives in this House from Northern Ireland, that they would wish to see much more meaningful local government implemented in the Province at the earliest possible date? If the right hon. and learned Gentleman accepts the argument that I have put forward and my point of view, would he and his colleagues support those hon. Members who want really meaningful devolved government to be granted at the earliest possible date to local authorities in Northern Ireland?

Mr. Archer: I have read the document entitled "The Way Forward". It would be out of order and perhaps out of place in this debate if we became involved in a

discussion about the future of local government in Northern Ireland. I was seeking to draw to the attention of the House not so much how these decisions are taken but what will happen to children and their families because these cuts are being made. I hope that the hon. Gentleman will forgive me if I content myself with that question for the moment. We may have an opportunity to discuss his question on another occasion.
We are told that the board takes the view that £35,000 could be knocked off the milk and meals bill. No doubt it could, but so far as I can see that could be done only by reducing the quality of the meals. In many of these schools, meals are not an additional snack which provides a kind of optional extra. Many of the children I saw receive virtually no other substantial source of protein. One headmaster to whom I spoke in a deprived area said to me, "They do not come to me to be educated; they come mainly to be fed." That may have been a cynical view, but we are speaking of schools where it is unusual for a child to come from a family which can afford to pay for school meals. I asked one headmaster how many of his children pay for school meals. He said, "I am still using the roll of meal tickets I started four years ago."
One way in which the Belfast board is seeking to meet the target is by cutting £100,000 off the Belfast school of music. That would mean an end to something like half of its teaching. Belfast has a long musical tradition. It has maintained that tradition, despite all the difficulties of recent years. The people of Belfast have found solace and inspiration in their music. Now, in addition to all their other deprivations, they are to be deprived of music teaching. The Government are even stopping the children from singing. I have written to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the hon. Member for Peterborough (Dr. Mawhinney). I say at once that he has not yet had time to reply. I look forward to his reply. But when the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland, the hon. Member for Wiltshire, North (Mr. Needham), replies to this debate we shall be grateful if he is able to provide a crumb of comfort about that subject.

Mr. Mallon: I see the point that the right hon. and learned Gentleman is making. He is concentrating on one area board, but I hope that the Minister will bear in mind that more places in Northern Ireland than Belfast are affected by such cuts.

Mr. Archer: I readily accept that. But the hon. Gentleman will understand that in the interest of time I cannot go through all the figures with which I have been provided. I was citing an example of something which is tragically widespread.
One other way in which the Belfast board proposes to save £50,000 is by closing two nursery schools and, I believe, five nursery units. I do not know whether the Government have assessed whether there is a need for those schools and units. But I heard today about one of the schools which is to be closed. I refer to Stranmillis school. Its closure will save rather less than £10,000 a year. It is attended by Catholic and Protestant children, and, I am told, by black and white children. The school is already over-subscribed, so there is no suggestion that the places are not needed. The families of those children do not seem to have any alternative school to which to send their


children. They just have a problem. The total number of nursery places to be lost amounts to about 300. What is to happen to those 300 children?
I turn to class V and housing. In his clear opening speech the Minister told us that the apparent increase in the grant for housing was simply a technical adjustment. However, I know that on 30 January 1986 the Housing Executive announced that its budget for 1986–87 was £94 million less than it had envisaged. It had requested a budgetary increase of £50 million and it had received a cut of £44 million. That means that there will be 1,500 new houses instead of 2,500. In addition, improvement work on 7,000 homes will have to be shelved, including work on 2,000 homes that are designated as priority, and the rehabilitation of old houses will have to be halved.
I say at once that the Housing Executive in Northern Ireland is to be congratulated on a substantial improvement in Northern Ireland's housing position over the past few years. But that, of course, has to be seen against a background of deprivation. There is still a waiting list of 24,500 families. About half of them are estimated to be in urgent need. Although that need is still unmet, it looks as though some 3,000 jobs will be lost in the construction industry as a direct result of those cuts and that another 2,000 will be lost indirectly.
That gives the lie to the suggestion that unemployment is caused by modern technology. Those 5,000 workers will be eating their hearts out on the dole not because those vital houses are being built by robots but because they are not being built at all. So we have a Government who appear to be indifferent to education and housing need.
Class X relates to social security and other financial benefits. It would be easy to give examples of families in need of immediate benefit. But the House has discussed such problems before, and I do not propose to list them tonight. Instead, I shall turn to the Government's proposed restructuring of social security. As the Prime Minister told us some time ago, it is a restructuring. There will be some winners and some losers. The implication, as I understood it, is that that makes it about right. I do not accept that, for two reasons. First, we are dealing with individuals. It does not follow that because someone has done a good turn to A it is all right to do a bad turn to B. It might be acceptable if it could be shown that the losers were all those who could afford to lose, but that is not the case. The cuts are falling on the low paid, the unemployed and the elderly along with everyone else.
Secondly, there is no evidence that the winners and losers will balance. Those in the most vulnerable categories are not likely to break even, even when they are considered not individually but as categories. As I understand it, no one will receive benefit to cover the whole of the rates. Even the poorest will pay 20 per cent. of their rates bill. There will be no additional lump sum payments for those receiving supplementary benefit for special needs.
At Question Time on 27 February, I quoted some calculations of Dr. Eileen Evason, who estimates that, overall, single people will lose
an annual total of £8·9 million, pensioners £11–4 million, low-income families £3·3 million and families as a whole £8·8 million" .—[0fficial Report, 27 February 1986; Vol. 92, c. 1061.]

Has the Minister a word of comfort for the people affected by all that?

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: The right hon. and learned Gentleman will appreciate—and I am sure that my hon. Friend will say this when he responds to the debate—that the Social Security Bill to which he has just referred is still going through the House, and its conclusions have not been reached. I hope that he and his colleagues, together with some of my colleagues on the Government Benches, will put down amendments not only in the remaining Committee stages but also on Report. There are still some uncertainties and the concern that he has expressed about certain areas is shared by both Government and Opposition Members. Will the right hon. and learned Gentleman accept that?

Mr. Archer: I am most grateful to the hon. Gentleman for those encouraging words, and I will see that they are passed on to my colleagues who serve on that Committee. The hon. Gentleman will appreciate that the Bill is not directly concerned with Northern Ireland, but it may be that any advantages gained on that Committee will be reflected for the people of Northern Ireland. I am most grateful to him.
Finally—and I say "finally" not because it is the last example of deprivation but because my time will be exhausted long before this unhappy catalogue of suffering is complete—I draw attention to class IX, item 1, expenditure by the Department of Health and Social Services on health and personal social services. Does that item include any provision for the hospital service? The hon. Gentleman referred to the new City block. I had pointed out to me recently the new guidelines for getting better value for money in the health and social services. I make no complaint about that. We are all in favour of better value for money. If that inquiry can identify areas where resources can be saved without damage to services, there will be no complaint from Opposition Members. Until that has been done, however, we still have to look at cases where the lack of resources causes serious problems.
For some months there has been widespread anxiety about hospital services in Northern Ireland. Some local hospitals are threatened with closure. At others there is concern because the services are not meeting the requirements of the public. There has been concern about what is called "paediatric cardiology". Those are long words. The use of technical terms sometimes seems to soften the force of the blow. What it means is children with heart conditions. The Government have made some provision for that, for treating renal disease, for cervical screening and for the diagnosis and treatment of AIDS. For that we are grateful. The provision came after some recent manifestations of widespread concern. The Government made the money available, but the Minister will have seen the letter by Professor Buchanan, the chairman of the medical division of the Royal Victoria hospital, in the Belfast Telegraph of 6 March, indicating that it is very far from the end of the problem. Recent losses of acute medical beds in the region have thrown considerable strain on other medical beds. The closure of Claremont hospital has led to the loss of neurology beds, and that has led to a shortage of specialty beds generally.
Two days after the letter, on 8 March, Mr. Jim O'Reilly, an official of CoHSE, gave examples of the


consequences of that loss of beds. He spoke of seriously ill patients waiting in the corridors of the Royal Victoria hospital because no beds were available. We know that hospitals have been placed under acute strain. Perhaps a crisis has been averted because the staff are concerning themselves to avert one, but unless something is done lives will be placed at risk. I cannot attempt to put it better than Professor Buchanan when he said:
The Government appears to be intent in cutting the 'boiler room' of medicine, the unsorted acutely ill who are often elderly and may have additional social problems. This area tends to be unglamorous, without champions and pressure groups. It is, therefore, a softer target, as it is less indentifiable and has less muscle. But it is at the front line of hospital medicine.
The public must be made aware of the feelings of impending doom prevalent among the servants of the National Health Service. We agree with rationalisation, but the cutting of funding which can result in deterioration in patient care and almost certain loss of life is unforgiveable.
I do not seek to improve on that as a way of drawing to the attention of the Minister what is going on in the hospital service.
I have sought not to over-dramatise these matters, but to recite the facts as I know them. Unless the Minister says that those are not the facts, the House is entitled to ask: what action are the Government proposing to take? The burden on the House is all the heavier because today, for political reasons, which I would be out of order to discuss, all those misfortunes are falling on the people of Northern Ireland when most of them are not being represented in the House and when their needs are not being made known by their elected Members of Parliament.
We in the Labour party have not made the task of government in Northern Ireland more difficult than it needs to be. No one can accuse us of lacking in restraint. But these things are crying out to be said, and someone must say them. Thousands of people in Northern Ireland will be listening to the Minister's reply.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: In presenting the order, the Minister gave the House a painstaking analysis of some of the major expenditure decisions which were reflected by the figures in the order. The right hon. and learned Member for Warley, West (Mr. Archer) responded in critical vein by dealing with the substantive matters of expenditure in a number of classes and votes.
I intend to concern myself, however, as heretofore exclusively with the constitutional aspect of the order. My difficulty is that the Minister in charge of the order knows what I will say, but does not know how I shall say it in a different way from the way in which it has been said already, but hopes that I shall succeed. The gravamen of the matter is that, with the appropriation orders, we are wasting the time of the House without any corresponding gain in the precise scrutiny by hon. Members of the separate items of expenditure, or the opportunity to bring forward pertinent criticisms and to push them through. We are doing that because of the existence of an entirely unnecessary piece of financial mechanism—the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund, into which money is poured so that it may be poured out again, but with the side effect that a simulacrum of financial control is created which is discharged by means of these three appropriation orders during the year.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman said that this evening we were engaged in an exercise in direct rule. With great respect, I would not say that that is correct,

because we could dispense with the necessity of these orders, and, indeed, with the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund, without altering, although I hope that he is as anxious as the rest of us to alter, the procedure on legislation by Order in Council. I have his assent that that is the essence of what we have agreed conventionally to describe as direct rule.
The exercise in which we are engaged is the preservation of one of the relics of the Stormont Government and Parliament. It was set up in 1920 in order that the Stormont Government and Parliament might operate as nearly as possible as if it were a dominion Government and Parliament with a separate financial organisation and a duplication of the financial machinery which this House uses in the United Kingdom. We are taking part in the charade of keeping that in existence on the offchance that—one does not know, but somehow, some day or other in some unforeseen circumstances—it might be handy to have a Consolidated Fund for Northern Ireland.
In doing that we are perpetuating one of the causes of instability in the Province, which is uncertainty as to the constitutional future and repetition of the determination to the Government and Parliament of the United Kingdom to deny to the people of the Province that to which they are entitled as part of the United Kingdom, to be treated, administered and legislated for like all the rest.
I did give a half-indication to the Minister that I would try to vary the message to which he has so courteously responded and acknowledged on previous occasions. Happily enough, there came into my hands—although not only into mine but into those of other hon. Members and I am sure into the hands of the Government or the Government's advisers—an article by Andrew Likierman, who is the senior lecturer at the London Business School and a director of the school's institute of public sector management, which has published a propos in the Journal of Irish Business and Administrative Research—it could not be better blessed in its origin or in its authorship.
He has, for the first time so far as I know, carried out a thorough and critical examination of exactly the phenomenon which is before us this evening in the form of this order. He is not in favour of it. He believes that it mystifies far more than it enlightens. He is on the track of the question that the Minister was asked from his own Back Benches. It tends to obscure the real relationship between the finances of Northern Ireland and the finances of the rest of the United Kingdom. It also denies to those who are attempting to control expenduture in Northern Ireland the full use of the opportunities which are given in the rest of the United Kingdom by the financial mechanisms which operate there.
I am not going to trouble the House with many quotations, but in fairness to Mr. Likierman I think it would be right if one or two sentences were on the record. He said:
the Northern Ireland position is made very much more obscure than that of the rest of the United Kingdom because of a mechanism in the control of Northern Ireland expenditure which has no parallel in either financial or constitutional terms elsewhere in the United Kingdom—the Northern Ireland Consolidated Fund which was set up in the 1920 Government of Ireland Act.
He then points out that it is perfectly practicable to dispense advantageously with this antiquated survival from a past constitutional era and says:


To bring Northern Ireland into line with the practice for Wales and Scotland, it would not appear to be difficult technically to cover the Northern Ireland Supply Estimates as a whole in Class 17. The dividing line between what was covered in Class 17 and what was covered in other Classes"—
this dividing line applies to Wales and Scotland as well—
would then be decided on the basis of administrative boundaries".
In other words, he is saying that Northern Ireland should be treated as Wales and Scotland are treated for the purpose of Estimates and for the purpose of financial procedures.
He then outlines the two steps which would produce that result:
First, the creation of a Select Committee to handle the affairs of Northern Ireland in the same way as the affairs of Scotland and Wales are handled by their respective Departmental Select Committees.
May I interrupt the quotation at that point to refer to the speech of the right hon. and learned Member for Warley, West? I am sure that he would agree with me that that interrogation would be conducted much more effectively if it were conducted within the ambit of a Select Committee which could call for witnesses and interrogate Ministers and report to the House.

Mr. William Cash: I have advocated such a Select Committee and I am most interested to hear that the right hon. Gentleman appears to be suggesting one himself as a mechanism for ensuring that there is proper discussion in the House where all who have the right to be consulted and can consult one another can sit around a table, discuss matters and call for papers and witnesses.

Mr. Powell: I am answering the hon. Gentleman's question strictly in the financial context, but he is entirely right. The deduction from treating Northern Ireland for financial purposes as Wales and Scotland are treated is indeed that that method of scrutiny would be available to deal with the Northern Ireland Estimates.
I interrupted the quotation. I shall return to the remaining part of it which outlines the second step which, in the author's opinion, would need to be taken.
Second, the winding up of the NICF and the direct voting of Northern Ireland expenditure by Parliament in the same way as public expenditure for the rest of the UK is currently voted. With or without Direct Rule, Northern Ireland Supply Estimates could be voted through without the need to engage in duplicate voting of 'Transfers to the NICF' at Westminster or the transfer of funds into and out of a notional account.
We are holding an inquest, I hope, this evening upon a constitutional device which does not serve Northern Ireland or those who represent the people of Northern Ireland, which does not serve the convenience of this House and which is out of line with the financial mechanisms that the House has evolved, and recently improved, for the control and scrutiny of public expenditure.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: I do not want to embarrass the right hon. Gentleman or to delay the House on this important subject but if the right hon. Gentleman's proposal were accepted—I would urge the Government to give it more than just sympathetic consideration as a means of bridging the gulf—would the right hon. Gentleman, whose presence we are all delighted to have, give an assurance that it might bring some of his worthy colleagues back to the House so that the people of

Northern Ireland would be represented here? Would it give them the opportunity to come back without breaching the principle upon which they clearly feel it difficult to serve in this place despite having been elected?

Mr. Powell: It is not for me to pass my personal judgment on my colleagues' decision where and how their duties to their constituents of the Province are best discharged, but I can come towards the hon. Gentleman by saying that anything which holds out to the people of Northern Ireland an assurance of the only available constitutional stability—that is, to be treated as what they are: a part of the United Kingdom—would be a pacificatory and beneficent act and could well be crucial in overcoming the current crisis which has been upon us since 15 November.
I wanted to refer to a respect in which Northern Ireland happily is within the ambit of the financial procedures of the House. We have the benefit of the consideration by the Public Accounts Committee, along with the reports of the Comptroller and Auditor-General and of the Comptroller and Auditor-General for Northern Ireland. It would be churlish of me, having said what I have about financial arrangements, not to acknowledge in this House the work done by the Comptroller and Auditor-General for Northern Ireland and the stimulating effect it has on the Northern Ireland Department.
I hope that those who serve Northern Ireland in such a way do not imagine that, because of our apparent preoccupation with politics, which is unavoidable, we do not study or benefit by their work. I have taken the occasion in other contexts to pay tribute to those who scrutinise the delegated legislation. I pay tribute here to those who scrutinise the financial accounts of the Northern Ireland Departments.
I should like to refer to the response published only in October 1985 by the Northern Ireland Department of Finance and Personnel to two reports of the Public Accounts Committee, particularly the 14th report. I think that it would be fair to those whose work resulted in that interchange between the Committee, the Comptroller and Auditor General and the Northern Ireland Department of Finance and Personnel to underline some of the recommendations. I underline the recommendations in connection with hospital costs, the separation of staff and patient catering, full trading accounts for canteens, monitoring of the level of staff contribution to overheads, and target levels for waste. I believe that all those matters have been taken on board by the Department of Health and Social Security but it would be welcome if it could be acknowledged by the Minister when he replies. If there is anything to add since the report which was laid before the House in 1985, I am sure that he and I could contrive ways in which that could be made available more widely than simply by a letter to myself.
I want to refer to the supplementary benefit paragraphs of that report, particularly to the subject of single payments and the potential abuse of single payments. Here, I am approaching ground mentioned by the right hon. and learned Member for Warley, West. I was one of those who was dismayed by the proposal so drastically to reform the single payment procedure as has been agreed, at any rate, for the rest of the United Kingdom. I think that this is one of the opportunities that one can take to put on


record what I have found to be the function of the social security offices in Northern Ireland and the use by those offices of the weapon or instrument of the single payment.
It has been my experience in the 12 years that I have represented a constituency in Northern Ireland to have been far more closely involved in the affairs, needs and anxieties of my constituents than I ever found was the case in Wolverhampton. I have been much closer, thereby, to the practical work, individual by individual, of the social security offices and have often been a bearer of tidings between the constituent and the social security office. I want to put it on record—I hope that it is not too late for this testimony to be taken into account in any reforms which take place more generally throughout the United Kingdom—that I have been impressed by the extraordinary value of the single payment as a means whereby unique circumstances can be treated uniquely by the social security staffs.
Social security staffs are, for the most part, highly experienced and very hard-boiled individuals. They combine those necessary qualities of experience and being hard-boiled with very real human understanding and sympathy and knowledge of local circumstances. Over and over again I have been astonished at the way in which what seemed to be a way out, request or plea from a family or a person has been recognised, defined and met by a social security office by means of a single payment.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: The right hon. Gentleman may be interested to know that the corporate wisdom of the Select Committee on Social Services, which has undertaken a short but full report on the reform of social security proposed in the White Paper, fully endorses his views.

Mr. Powell: I am glad to hear that, and I believe that a substantial element of such discretion will be left behind in the hands of the social security officers, for over and again I have found that apparently intractable family and individual conditions can be analysed and dealt with in a way that they could not have been dealt with without the power to make a single payment.
No doubt there has been substantial additional expenditure beyond what was estimated under this head; there will always be, where there is discretion, marginal cases where judgments might be different and where possibly pressures—perhaps especially in Northern Ireland—have been unduly exerted. I have no hesitation in testifying to the House that overwhelmingly, on the basis of my experience in the past 12 years, not only do the social security officers perform the most outstanding of all the social services in the Province, but the ability to use their discretion in the form of a single payment is an instrument of which it would be wrong to deprive them.

Mr. Nicholas Lyell: It is of the essence of the Union that we are all united in one country, and it is because we are united with Northern Ireland that tonight we are debating this order and the moneys that will be transferred from this part of the United Kingdom to that part of the United Kingdom. I am grateful to my hon. Friend the Minister of State for clarifying in my mind the fact that those moneys are about £1·5 billion each year,

excluding the cost of defence. It is proper that the better-off portions of the United Kingdom should be paving that money to assist Northern Ireland, which is less well-off at the moment, but which I hope will not always be so.
Nevertheless, we should be conscious that this is the first appropriation order debate since the Anglo-Irish agreement and it is the view of the House, which is one Chamber of the Parliament of the Union, that the agreement is in the best interests of our nation as a whole and of Northern Ireland. That view may be right or wrong. With my limited knowledge, I support it. Real benefits for Northern Ireland and our country as a whole can derive from the agreement, and I do not believe that it represents the threat to Northern Ireland that I know that some of my right hon. and hon. Friends, and some Opposition Members, believe it to be. Whatever we believe, it is the will of Parliament.
I realise that those who oppose the agreement feel the matter deeply, but because we are all one Parliament I am taking this opportunity to say that if people hold such feelings, the right place to express them—they have the best possible example in the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell)—is in this Parliament, where they can talk to us and help us to understand their views better, and give us the opportunity to express to them the reasons why we hold a contrary view.
I was most interested in what the right hon. Member for South Down said on his constitutional theme—that he wished that the whole of the United Kingdom were governed in the same way. I may be misrepresenting what he said, but I hope that I understood at least that he was seeking to say that we should be governed much more closely in the same way, whether we be in Northern Ireland or on the mainland. I cannot see why that should fit in with any dislike of the Anglo-Irish agreement. It should make the agreement even more popular because, whereas they see themselves separately treated, it would mean that we were all treated in exactly the same way.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: Is the hon. and learned Mernber suggesting that the Anglo-Irish conference should deal with the administration of Wales, Scotland and England? If that is so, I would join hands with him.

Mr. Lyell: I am glad that the right hon. Gentleman asked that question. Although it is not my suggestion that that should happen, if it did happen perhaps the right hon. Gentleman's reasons for objecting to the agreement would disappear.

Mr. Powell: It is no worse than the EEC.

Mr. Lyell: As the right hon. Gentleman says in his own way, it is no worse than the EEC. I believe that the right hon. Gentleman has put his finger on the problem. The Anglo-Irish agreement is no worse than the EEC.

Mr. Speaker: Order. May I draw the hon. and learned Gentleman's attention to the fact that we are debating the appropriation order and expenditure in Northern Ireland and not the agreement.

Mr. Lyell: You are correct, Mr. Speaker, to draw me back to that topic. I shall return to the appropriation order. I started with that subject and I apologise if I have gone on a slight loop.
I started with the agreement because the appropriation of moneys from one part of the United Kingdom to another part is essentially the function of this Parliament. It is


inextricably bound with the other elements of government and with the most important element of government in Northern Ireland which is in all our minds at present.
Whatever the view about the appropriation order or the view of the nexus of this party or Government or of the Government of any other country, the right place for such a view to be expressed by hon. and right hon. Members elected from Northern Ireland is within this Chamber. The right attitude for those hon. Members to express towards bullying, barricading, or threats to their citizens, which will increase the costs and the requirements for appropriation from this House, is here in the Chamber. That last point brings me back within the rules of order.
Hitherto I have received no correspondence from my constituents on the subject of Northern Ireland in all the years that I have represented my constituency. My constituents now make the point that they think that the people in Northern Ireland should obey our laws, particularly those people who set themselves up as leaders in their community. They should obey our laws in the same way as we expect everyone to obey our laws.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: My hon. and learned Friend is making an interesting speech, quite late at night. Would he agree with me that, if he wants to see his objective reached, the Government could achieve it by setting up a Select Committee for Northern Ireland along the lines described by the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) in his interesting and positive speech earlier in the debate? Would my hon. and learned Friend agree that—

Mr. Speaker: Order. This subject is rather wide of appropriation.

Mr. Winterton: Would my hon. and learned Friend agree that that could be achieved, in relation to appropriation matters, along the lines of the Select Committees for Wales and Scotland that already exist in the House?

Mr. Lyell: You will recognise, Mr. Speaker, that constitutional suggestions from my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) always require the most careful thought. Consequently I shall ponder his suggestion.
There are other interesting constitutional ideas in the Anglo-Irish agreement which might or might not have a bearing on my hon. Friend's suggestion for wider discussion between various parliamentarians. I commend those ideas for careful thought also.
I should like to conclude by saying that the way of democracy is persuasion and the way to persuade is to be present to persuade. We greatly look forward to seeing those whom we deeply respect as brave men, elected to represent their constituents in this House, present in the Chamber to do that.

Mr. Seamus Mallon: Unlike the hon. and learned Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lye11) and the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell), I find it refreshing to have an opportunity to speak without referring to Northern Ireland's constitutional position or any of its attendant problems. I shall be brief because the right hon. and learned Member for Warley,

West (Mr. Archer) put his finger on all the major issues in the order with which I wanted to deal. He did so superbly and referred to the essence of my criticism of the legislation. When it comes to buildings, machinery and land, there is an increase, but when it comes to people, there is a decrease. That is the essence of the order.
I should like to refer to the people who are least able to look after themselves. People in the farming industry are suffering. On the suggestion of agricultural advisers in Northern Ireland, they went into the milk industry. Suddenly, a milk quota was tied around their necks and they could not cope. They could not sell their milk. We have been told that there has been a £1·3 million increase, but that is not an adequate amount to give the people who need to be saved.
I ask the Under-Secretary of State to re-examine the quota to ascertain ways to help those farmers. It is not merely a matter of farmers having had a bad year. It involves the loss of the farmer's entire stock and machinery. It entails total reinvestment by the farmer if he is ever again to become viably involved in agriculture.
I have dealt with one raw material in Northern Ireland—grass. I should like now to deal with another resource—our young people, especially in relation to education cuts and the comments by the Minister of State on class II. The Minister said that there was an increase of £1·2 million in the youth training programme. What provision, if any, will be made from that sum for the special training programme for handicapped people? Last year, I contacted the Minister's office about this matter. It is sad to see the way in which young handicapped people cannot avail themselves of the programme's benefits. Under that programme, they can develop at their own pace. They cannot cope in training schemes, so they give up. I specifically ask for an increased provision because of the need in all towns in Northern Ireland. It is a shame that we do not have such a provision.
I agree with what the Minister said about the increased allocation for the ACE schemes, but he made no reference to Enterprise Ulster. That was a serious omission. Although I am a great advocate of ACE schemes, I recognise that Enterprise Ulster has created employment stability. It has provided great advantages for district councils and various other bodies. Enterprise Ulster caters for the middle-aged part of the market whom ACE schemes simply do not cover. Has the Minister been converted about Enterprise Ulster?
Under class V, the Housing Executive will receive £94 million less than it requires. I should like to home in on one element of the Housing Executive. It applies not only to Northern Ireland but to England, Scotland and Wales. The cuts have meant that maintenance is not of lasting benefit. That applies right across the board. In five, 10 or 15 years, some of the maintenance work will have to be carried out again. That means pouring good money after bad.

It being Ten o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

It being Ten o'clock, MR. SPEAKER proceeded to put forthwith the Questions which he was directed by paragraph (1) of the Standing Order (Questions on voting of estimates, &amp;c.) to put at that hour.

ESTIMATES, 1986–87 (NAVY), VOTE A

Resolved,
That during the year ending on 31st March 1987 a number not exceeding 71,000 all ranks be maintained for Naval Service.

ESTIMATES, 1986–87 (ARMY), VOTE A

Resolved,
That during the year ending on 31st March 1987 a number not exceeding 187,600 all ranks be maintained for Army Service, a number not exceeding 5,000 for the Home Service Force, a number not exceeding 141,000 for the Individual Reserves, a number not exceeding 86,000 for the Territorial Army and a number not exceeding 7,780 for the Ulster Defence Regiment.

ESTIMATES, 1986–87 (AIR), VOTE A

Resolved,
That during the year ending on 31st March 1987 a number not exceeding 96,600 all ranks be maintained for the Air Force Service, a number not exceeding 6,900 for the Royal Air Force Reserve and a number not exceeding 2,500 for the Royal Auxiliary Air Force.

SUPPLEMENTARY ESTIMATES 1985–86

Resolved,
That a further supplementary sum, not exceeding £896,102,000, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund to defray charges for the Defence and Civil services which will come in the course of payment during the year ending on 3Ist March 1986, as set out in House of Commons Papers Nos. 190, 213 and 249.

ESTIMATES, EXCESSES, 1984–85

Resolved,
That a sum, not exceeding 155,484,146.89, be granted to Her Majesty out of the Consolidated Fund to make good excesses on certain grants for Defence and Civil Services for the year ended 31st March 1985, as set out in House of Commons Paper No. 227.
Bill ordered to be brought in upon the two foregoing Resolutions and upon the Resolution [3 February] relating to Supplementary Estimates and to Excesses, by the Chairman of Ways and Means, Mr. Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr. John MacGregor, Mr. John Moore, Mr. Ian Stewart and Mr. Peter Brooke.

CONSOLIDATED FUND (No. 2)

Mr. John Moore accordingly presented a Bill to apply certain sums out of the Consolidated Fund to the service of the years ending on 31 March 1985 and 1986: And the same was read the First time; and ordered to be read a Second time tomorrow and to be printed. [Bill 91.]

BUSINESS OF THE HOUSE

Ordered,
That, at this day's sitting, the Ways and Means Motion may be proceeded with, though opposed, until any hour.—[Mr. Peter Lloyd.]

Northern Ireland (Appropriation)

Question again proposed.

Mr. Mallon: I was referring to the repair and maintenance of Housing Executive houses, and my remarks apply not only to Northern Ireland but throughout Britain. Good money will have to be thrown after bad because of the decisions that are being made about maintenance work following the cuts that the Government have made.
I raise a constituency point; I have spoken to the Minister about it, although it applies to other parts of the country. There are in my area 184 houses which are being converted from gas to coal-fired. This is the third system to be put in those houses, all in an attempt to get the smoke to go up the chimney. A blind man might have seen at the beginning that a proper chimney was required, but no. Three attempts were needed to prove that a chimney was necessary. What has been the cost of that? If we skimp on such matters, we shall get a bad job and it will cost double or treble the money to put things right later.
As I have said, our second great natural resource in the Province is our young people. We shall debate this whole issue tomorrow, and I hope to speak then. Youngsters in Northern Ireland—the same will apply to many people in Britain—will find that unless daddy has a great deal of money they will not get third-level education. A Northern Ireland student studying in Britain will lose about £500, in addition to losing the travelling allowance to and from the Province. No one will be able to afford such education.
That policy is short-sighted. Bitter experience has taught us in Northern Ireland that when young people find themselves on the scrap heap of life at 18 they are prey to the paramilitaries and to those who want to use them. It costs much more to keep someone in gaol for 10 years than to keep him at university for three or four years with a proper grant. That matter must be considered.
The right hon. and learned Member for Warley, West has dealt admirably with education cuts which affect those within the education system who are least able to look after themselves. It is not just the big schools in Belfast but the small rural schools which are losing additional hours of teaching. Those schools need them most because they have a greater percentage of problem and educationally subnormal pupils. The kitchens will be closed in many schools. That will be a false economy. The kitchens and the equipment will still be there but the Department will have to meet the extra cost of bussing in the meals. The Minister should note that that false economy will prove detrimental, especially in rural areas.
Class X deals with attendance allowances, invalid car allowances and related benefits. I have been trying to find out what is available to a totally blind person who is not otherwise disabled. In a caring society such a person cannot get a mobility allowance because, to qualify for it, one must be either unable or almost unable to walk. A blind person who can walk may not be able to get anywhere because he needs someone to help him. The totally blind person cannot get an invalid car allowance because, of course, he cannot drive. The totally blind person who is not otherwise disabled cannot get an attendance allowance because, to qualify, he requires constant attention day or night, or both day and night. If he can look after himself to any extent he cannot get an


attendance allowance, nor can someone who helps to look after him get an allowance. Therefore, in a caring society a category of the severely handicapped cannot get allowances which are available for others.
There is a fault in the legislation if attendance allowances cannot be paid to the totally blind who are not otherwise disabled. Such a person should be able to take advantage of the mobility allowance. The legislation must be amended. We can gauge the attitude of Government and of society when they leave at a total disadvantage a small sector of the community who suffer through no fault of their own.
I leave the House with one thought. I have a small booklet here on disablement allowances. The totally blind person cannot get an attendance allowance, a mobility allowance, or any allowance to enable his relations to look after him. What he can get is very interesting indeed. It is rather cynical and insensitive. He can get a television licence at a reduced cost. That is written here. It is time that this book went into the incinerator and a proper system of services for the totally blind was printed, with the necessary changes in the legislation, so that those people are not at such a disadvantage.
Let me finish with one general point on class XI, vote 1. I note that £1,452,000 is earmarked for the Northern Ireland Assembly. We heard an interesting debate between the right hon. Member for South Down and Conservative Members on scrutiny, but here is £1,452,000 earmarked for an Assembly from which a former Secretary of State walked out and to which he refused to return, and from which the present Secretary of State has threatened to withdraw staff if they do not carry out the scrutiny that the right hon. Member for South Down was advocating. Yet within this appropriation there is that sum of money for a body which is not doing that.
I leave the matter there. I do not want to make a political point, but I should love to see that £1,452,000 being usefully used on something like services for blind people or allowances for young people who wish to continue their education.

Mr. William Cash: I wish to make one simple point. In the House we are primarily concerned with the voting of money and the redress of grievance. In both cases, one needs to participate in order to be able to appropriate.
It is with great interest that I see the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) in the Chamber. I deeply regret the fact that he is not accompanied by his colleagues. There is an opportunity for a positive and constructive solution to the current difficulties with Northern Ireland—there is an opportunity for building bridges.
I was particularly interested in the point that the right hon. Gentleman made on the extract that he read by the gentleman from the London Business School and his reference to the Select Committee. I know that the right hon. Gentleman confined his point to the financial aspects, but it would be far better if his colleagues could find their way to coming back to this Chamber in order to participate in the vote which will lead to the appropriation of moneys under this order, and in so many other ways.
I think that a Select Committee could be devised—I am not proposing the Grand Committee system, because that would be wholly inappropriate—with amendments to Standing Orders 70(a) and (b) relating to public business which would enable us to have a Select Committee in which there could be real participation and in which Northern Ireland Members could sit down with those from the rest of the United Kingdom and discuss matters which are germane to the future of Northern Ireland.
I have nothing more to say on the subject, other than that I hope we can maintain dialogue. It is a matter of the greatest importance that those Members of the United Kingdom who represent Northern Ireland who are not here tonight, should attend future debates.

Mr. Nicholas Winterton: I am delighted, in dealing with matters relating to Northern Ireland, to follow my hon. Friend the Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash). I find myself thoroughly in sympathy, as I think the House will be aware from my earlier interventions, with his proposal about how the House, by involving the elected representatives of Northern Ireland, could deal with all matters relating to appropriation, which is the purpose of the order.
I hope that my hon. Friend the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland will give more than passing attention to the repeat—if one may put it that way—speech by the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell), because I believe that he put forward a way of bringing the elected representatives of Northern Ireland back to this place to deal with matters that concern them and their constituents.
I have to relate my remarks particularly to matters of finance in the appropriation order. The message is clear. I believe that it gives an opportunity for all parties to the current dispute to come together with honour in order to solve the problem. I hope that the message gets to the Secretary of State and perhaps even beyond him, to the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs and to the Prime Minister. It is encouraging to observe my hon. Friend the Parliamentary-Under Secretary of State nodding to me, indicating that the message has been taken on board, because I know that it is felt strongly by a number of Members on these Benches as well as by representatives of the Province.
I wish to pick out two points from the order. The first is class V relating to the Housing Executive. I am taking up a point touched upon by the right hon. and learned Member for Warley, West (Mr. Archer) relating to the amount of money being spent on housing improvement and on rehabilitation. I have had the honour of visiting Northern Ireland on many occasions, not least recently when I visited south Belfast and other areas of Belfast. I know how important it is in Belfast for the massive programme of housing improvements to continue. It is unfortunate that there will be a cutback in expenditure in this respect.
I believe that the communities of Northern Ireland must be permitted to remain together and increasingly to blend. That will not be achieved by mass demolition and redevelopment. It will come gradually by communities which have lived together continuing to involve themselves in what is going on in their own areas—for instance, in Belfast. That comes about by communities working and staying together. It can be achieved only by


rehabilitation and improvement, not by mass redevelopment which brings into an area many people who have nothing in common. I make a plea to my hon. Friends on the Front Bench that money allocated to housing rehabilitation and improvement should be increased.
The other point I wish to make follows remarks made by the right hon. and learned Member for Warley, West relating to pre-five schooling, particularly in Belfast. The right hon. and learned Gentleman mentioned a cutback in Stranmillis—an area which I have visited. From my experience on the Select Committee on Social Services, I know how important this form of education is, particularly in some of the more deprived areas. I know that my hon. Friend the Minister of State is very keen on this. No one, I think, has more knowledge of education than my hon. Friend. He is highly respected not only in the House, but elsewhere and, indeed, in the Province, where he has played a major role in recent times.
I have found this an interesting debate in which to participate as a Member from the mainland of the United Kingdom, but I feel deeply for the problems of Northern Ireland, a troubled part of the United Kingdom. I hope that the constructive and important speech made by the right hon. Member for South Down will bring some positive response from Her Majesty's Government.

Mr. Stuart Bell: I am not sure that there will be positive response from Her Majesty's Government. There will certainly be positive response from Her Majesty's Opposition. We are grateful for the intervention of the hon. Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton). It was lively, informed and instructive. He referred to the Housing Executive and to a matter that affects education. I shall refer to those subjects in my speech.
I accept that in these debates I play the role of sweeper. I sweep up for all right hon. and hon. Members who have already spoken in the debate. I was particularly interested in and impressed by the contribution of the hon. Member for Stafford (Mr. Cash) and for his felicitous phrases about the voting of money, the redress of grievances and participation in order to appropriate money. He expressed well-founded regret that the Unionist Members of Parliament, with the honourable exception of the right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell), are not in their places tonight.
I have less sympathy for some of the reasons that have been given for their absence. They held by-elections a few weeks ago and they won those by-elections. They lost one seat, yet they have deigned not to participate in the proceedings of this House. The right hon. Member for South Down tried to justify that by saying that it was up to them to get their priorities right as between their constituents and their constituencies and the House of Commons. However, in June 1985 the right hon. Member for South Down was quick to criticise my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warley, West (Mr. Archer) and me for not being here to take part in a short debate on historic churches in Northern Ireland. We were in Northern Ireland at that time, but the right hon. Gentleman said:
It is no substitute to be absent in the Province when Northern Ireland affairs are debated in this House."—[Official Report, 11 June 1985; Vol. 80, col. 857.]

I would not have made great play of that, had it not been stated on a number of occasions tonight that the Unionist Members of Parliament are absent because they are in their constituencies. As elected representatives, their first duty is to the House of Commons and they should take their places here. All right hon. and hon. Members would welcome them back to the House and it is their duty to be here when debates on Northern Ireland take place.
The hon. Member for Stafford referred to a point that was made by the right hon. Member for South Down about the work of the House of Commons in connection with Northern Irish matters—that is, a Grand Committee and a Select Committee. One of the casualties of the Anglo-Irish agreement and of the attitude of the Unionist Members of Parliament to that agreement is the change in the procedures of this House as they relate to Northern Ireland. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warley, West referred some time ago to a change in the procedures. This was taken up by the Leader of the Unionist Opposition, the right hon. Member for Lagan Valley (Mr. Molyneaux). Consultations were held on an informal basis to find out how we could improve the procedures of this House in the interests of the people of Northern Ireland. A casualty of the reaction of the Unionist Members of Parliament to the Anglo-Irish agreement is that those talks have not continued. The sooner that the Unionist Members of Parliament take their places in the Chamber the sooner we shall be able to look at the procedures with a view to modifying them in the interests of debates on subjects that affect Northern Ireland and in the interests of the people of Northern Ireland.
I was also glad to hear the speech of the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon). When we discussed the last draft Appropriation (Northern Ireland) Order I spoke after his predecessor, Mr. James Nicholson, who was then the Member of Parliament for Newry and Amargh. I was unable to be in the House when the present Member of Parliament for that constituency made his maiden speech. However, in the parlance of the House, I read it with care in Hansard. I am very glad to see that he has not only continued his involvement in the affairs of this House through his speeches from the Back Benches, but that in his short intervention tonight he has shown care and compassion for the people he seeks to represent, in addition to understanding the wider issues relating to Northern Ireland that are now before us. He referred to education cuts in Northern Ireland, to young people and to the intervention of my right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warley, West. We are, of course, very concerned about education. The cuts in the education budget will lead to 140 teacher redundancies in Northern Ireland, with the loss of 80 teaching posts in Belfast alone. The cuts in nursery schooling come at a time when nursery units need to be expanded and not reduced. The cut in further education in Belfast may lead to up to 100 job losses. Our concern about those cuts leads us to regret all the more the lack of Unionist Members in the Chamber to fight their corner.
The cost-cutting in education that has taken place over the years has led to the degeneration of plant in the Province's schools. The forcing of maintenance cuts and the moratorium on new school building will cost Northern Ireland dearly when major renovation work becomes necessary. Recently, the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, the hon. Member for Peterborough (Dr. Mawhinney), told the Irish National Teachers


Organisation that the education budget was being increased by £42 million, which represented a 6 per cent. increase. He also stated that spending had remained constant in real terms since 1979 and that spending per primary school pupil had risen by more than 10 per cent.
The first schedule to the order calls for a decrease of £350,000 in the sums for education and library boards. My right hon. and learned Friend the Member for Warley, West made great reference to the cuts in that area. Such cuts hardly inspire the Opposition to view the Minister's statements on education with confidence.
The hon. Member for Macclesfield also referred to housing. We are, of course, most concerned at the cuts in housing. I have written to the Minister on the subject and he has replied to questions on the Order Paper. As has been mentioned, the number of planned housing starts has been cut from 1,000 to 850, and the number of planned improvement schemes on public sector estates has been cut from 1,200 to 40. In addition we see the cancellation of 4,500 planned improvement grants and 15,000 repair grants. I apologise to the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh for concentrating once more on Belfast, because I know that he would prefer to concentrate on the wider spectrum. but the waiting list in Belfast is 8,255 with 6,582 in urgent need.
The hon. Member for Macclesfield expressed his concern for such issues when he referred to the cut in the housing budget of £44 million in real terms. Earlier my right hon. and learned Friend the member for Warley, West said that the Housing Executive had expected an increase of £50 milion. Thus we are not entirely happy with the figures in the order or with the fact that housing problems are still so great. Indeed, they will continue to be severe for some time to come.
I come to the intervention of the right hon. Member for South Down. After a while hon. Members could almost write each other's speeches. I could perhaps write a fair speech for the right hon. Gentleman on integration, the constitutional position or on the uncertainty, as he would say, of the constitutional future of the people of Northern Ireland. However, I repeat that the way in which business is conducted in the Chamber has been a casualty of the Anglo-Irish agreement. But although the hon. Member for Macclesfield might have agreed with him over the prospect of a more devolved council administration in Northern Ireland, our earlier debate clearly showed that the withdrawal of consent in council chambers had made that less of a possibility.
One other intervention was from the hon. and learned Gentleman the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lyell). He referred to the money given from the state exchequer to Northern Ireland. He said that it was a useful cause. The money given over a period of time bears thinking about. In 1979–80 we gave by way of subvention to Northern Ireland the sum of £944 million, 25·8 per cent. of the gross domestic product of Northern Ireland. In the United Kingdom as a whole it was 0·55 per cent. In 1985–86, the figure has risen to £1,573 million, a quite substantial sum of money to go from our Exchequer to that of Northern Ireland. [Interruption.] My hon. Friend the Member for Cumbernauld and Kilsyth (Mr. Hogg) says, sotto voce, "It certainly is." Many Welsh and Scottish Members wonder why Wales and Scotland cannot be similarly treated. We accept the problems of Northern Ireland, and we do not

criticise the Government for putting £1,573 million into the exchequer there, but it is something to take into account; and, without widening the debate, I trust that those who talk wildly of some kind of independence for Ulster will ask themselves where they think that £1,573 million a year is to come from, as they try to develop their plans.
The hon. Member for Macclesfield again, if he does not mind my referring to him, mentioned the Stranmillis school, a point taken up by my right hon. and learned Friend. He pointed out that the school was under threat because a subvention of £10,000 a year would not be made available. According to my information, this school is already over-subscribed, and is to be closed in the face of very high demand. Overall, some 300 nursery places will be lost. So we are grateful that the hon. Member for Macclesfield has picked this up and has added his weight to our concern at the school's imminent closure.
The questions of health were well covered by my right hon. and learned Friend. It is worth repeating, however, that the Government are underfunding in health provision, certainly in regard to the Eastern health board, and that there is something like £2·6 million to be made up in budget cutbacks. At a meeting on 8 November 1985 the board approved the closure of four hospitals. One was referred to by my right hon. and learned Friend, the Claremont street neurological hospital. The others are the Haypark geriatric hospital, the Samaritan gynaecological hospital and Templemore avenue geriatric hospital. These closures led to the loss of 200 hospital beds. While we would not wish to reduce the level of the debate to matters of small importance, it is a fact that the cuts have put great strain on the already overcrowded and underfunded Royal Victoria hospital. We echo the concern expressed by the National Union of Public Employees in late January at the conditions found in the kitchens of that hospital, and the need for a major cash injection to maintain adequate health standards.
We have had an interesting and prolonged debate, worthy of the subject, of the people of Northern Ireland, and of this Chamber. It is proper that, notwithstanding the absence of Unionist Members, we are here to defend the cause of the people who live in Northern Ireland, and give a full and thorough airing to the issues which concern them. We look forward to hearing the response of the Minister, to see whether we can reach some agreement on some of the issues discussed, and possibly see some action.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Northern Ireland (Mr. Richard Needham): The hon. Member for Middlesbrough (Mr. Bell) is a difficult man to follow when he replies, because in his role as sweeper he sounds increasingly more like a Government Front Bench spokesman than the Government spokesman will sound. It is a pity that his talent will be wasted for so long in that role.
I said that I would not quote Shakespeare, but having listened to the introduction of the right hon. and learned Member for Warley, West (Mr. Archer), I must say that in some areas
The lady doth protest too much, methinks.
I shall keep my remarks as brief as possible, but the debate raises important issues which have been seriously


discussed. If I miss a point, I assure hon. Members that either my hon. Friend the Minister or I will write to them with the details.
The public expenditure White Paper, Cmnd. 9702, published on 15 January 1986, puts forward planned increases in public expenditure in Northern Ireland of 12·5 per cent. between 1985–86 and 1988–89. The equivalent figure for the remainder of the United Kingdom is 11 per cent. We accept the need to maintain high levels of public expenditure in Northern Ireland because of the genuine difficulties and problems that exist there.
In 1983–84–-the latest figures available—per capita public expenditure in Northern Ireland was £2,461, in Scotland £2,058, in Wales £1,861 and in England £1,632.
I am sure that the right and learned gentleman will agree that we fully accept the importance of public expenditure in Northern Ireland, and our plans will continue to reflect that. However, we must continue to consider value for money on behalf of taxpayers.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman talked about problems in housing. We are to some extent the victims of our own success. During the past few years our record on housing in Northern Ireland has been admirable. We have made massive strides to improve the housing stock. I regret as much as anybody the problems that we now face with the budget and the spending levels that we hoped, but unfortunately failed to maintain. The reason is that law and order has top priority in the budget, followed by industry and employment, especially employment, and expenditure under those two heads has increased.
The figures for public expenditure per head on housing for 1986–87, although not exactly comparable, are £59 for England, £125 for Scotland, £50 for Wales and £225 for Northern Ireland. I accept that loan charges take a considerable amount of that, and that receipts from council house sales have not been as great as we hoped. That necessarily affects the position. The urban renewal regulation, which provides European Community assistance, has come to an end, and Government support for housing is £2 million less this year than last year. Nevertheless, we continue to spend significant funds.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: The Minister refers to the falling off of house sales. Does he agree that that is because the movement began much earlier in Northern Ireland, attained wider dimensions earlier, and subsequently the scope for it may be approaching exhaustion?

Mr. Needham: I accept the right hon. Gentleman's point. We have been working on the figures that the Housing Executive hoped to achieve for receipts. As it is the expert in that area, the Government accepted those figures. When they were not reached, the Government could only make up the difference with additional funds from the Northern Ireland block. He will appreciate that that has not been possible, for the reasons that I gave, but he is absolutely right.
The Government can he legitimately proud of their policy towards spending on housing in Northern Ireland in view of the two budget blocks I have mentioned. We have maintained it as a priority, and we are determined to keep it as high as we possibly can.
The right hon. and learned Member for Warley, West mentioned social security reforms, Eileen Evason and the difficulty that we will face in Northern Ireland with single payments. I do not think that Miss Evason's figures are

more than speculative, but it is difficult for us to get the figures exactly right. Nevertheless, our figures show that, excluding the impact of the social fund, because in Northern Ireland there is a much larger number of families with children and a rather lower percentage of pensioners, the outcome, after implementation of the social security review, would be about even. That does not take into account the effects of the social fund. All that I can say is that this matter has not yet been decided, but we will obviously try to keep as much flexibility as possible.
I take the right hon. and learned Gentleman's point about the hard-nosedness of social security benefit officers and how they use their discretion and sense. I echo his sentiments. I recently had the opportunity to listen to the views of the main managers of the social security offices. I am sure that they make single payments in the most efficient and sensible way. When we introduce the social fund, we will try to keep it as flexible as possible. I am sure that the House agrees that the present method of applying single payments is immensely complex for those who administer it and for those who receive it.
The right hon. and learned Gentleman spoke about education cuts. Before I refer to the problems facing the area boards, I should like to remind the House of the figures given by my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough (Dr. Mawhinney). The 1986–87 education budget of £662 million was an increase of £42 million, which is more than 6 per cent. above this year's outturn, when, as the right hon. and learned Gentleman is aware, school rolls will continue to decline. Some £15 million of this increase—approaching 7 per cent.—will go to area boards to recount capital budgets.
I can understand that, despite this increase, there is considerable pressure on the current budgets of the boards. My hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough, who has responsibility for education, will meet several board deputations this week. I must emphasise that none of the measures that the right hon. and learned Gentleman referred to have yet been formally submitted to the Department of Education. Therefore, it would not be appropriate for me to comment further.
I have considered the closure of nursery schools, but I assure the House that any such proposals would require the approval of my hon. Friend the Member for Peterborough, and he would have regard to any objections put to him as well as to any recommendations made to him by the boards.
I cannot accept the comments of the hon. Member for Middlesbrough to the effect that the Royal Victoria hospital is under-funded. I have heard much about this hospital, but I can honestly say that I have never before been told that one of it its major problems is under-funding. I can accept an argument about the use of resources, but it is difficult to argue that it is under-funded, especially when one considers the amount of money that it has and the value for money that it gives to patients.
As the right hon. and learned Member for Warley, West knows, expenditure on the Health Service in Northern Ireland is 25 per cent. per head higher than elsewhere in the United Kingdom. We have 50 per cent. more nurses than in the United Kingdom. I am not suggesting for one moment that there are not strong reasons for that, but those are the facts. We also have more general practitioners as a percentage of the population. We have a Health Service of which we can be proud, but, under the strategic guidelines, which I have tried to make widely available,


it is right to move towards greater emphasis on care in the community and preventive care, and slightly less emphasis on acute medicine, of which we have a higher level of provision than in England and Wales, although waiting lists are just as long. It is extremely important to get the strategic guidelines right, to get the Health Service behind us in what we are trying to achieve and to ensure that we are getting the best value for money.
The right hon. Member for South Down (Mr. Powell) knows a great deal more about this subject than I know, and I have followed his writings on the subject closely. I am trying to ensure that we get the maximum of involvement and participation in the Health Service. It cannot be said, however, that there is too little cash in Northern Ireland. There must be careful reorganisation with the maximum consultation and involvement.
My hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield (Mr. Winterton) asked me to give the Government's view about the constitutional point raised by the right hon. Member for South Down. I would not bandy words with the right hon. Gentleman on constitutional matters in the Chamber or outside. I listened carefully to what he said. Following the meeting with the leaders of the two Unionist parties last week, my right hon. Friend the Prime Minister offered consultation with the Unionists on the future of the Northern Ireland Assembly and on arrangements for handling Northern Ireland business in Parliament. It is important that we get back to negotiations on that issue and on wider issues, which I shall not go into as I should be out of order.
The right hon. Member for South Down talked of the Comptroller and Auditor General's work. As a former member of the Public Accounts Committee, I endorse everything that he said. I assure him that when reports from the Comptroller and Auditor General come to the Department of Health or the Environment Department, in which I have an interest, I make absolutely certain that they are considered and acted upon as quickly as possible. As long as I have anything to do with it, I assure him that that will continue.
I cannot comment on much of what my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Mid-Bedfordshire (Mr. Lyell) said, except that I agreed with most of it.
I shall move on smartly to the speech of the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh (Mr. Mallon) who is becoming a more than adequate number three batsman who seems to be playing the bowling at hourly intervals. I have some personal interest in milk quotas as my constituency has a farming make-up similar to many parts of Northern Ireland, and I can understand the problems that farmers face. I am sure that the hon. Gentleman is aware that my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State and my noble Friend Lord Lyell are doing what they can. Under the chairmanship of my right hon. and learned Friend the Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, they have concluded that an additional 50 million litres of quota should be sought for reallocation to exceptional hardship cases, small producers and special cases in Northern Ireland. I tried to work that out in the number of cows and got a nought in the wrong place. I am told that it is not 1,000 cows, but 10,000.
There has been much consideration over recent months of the Commission's proposal to introduce a Community outgoers scheme and of the fact that it may provide the

means of fulfilling the objectives set out by the Howe Committee. My colleagues, the Secretary of State and the Minister, have been ensuring that the views of Northern Ireland industry are taken into account during the United Kingdom discussions on the proposed scheme.
The point made by the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh on education and training for the handicapped is an issue in which my hon. Friend the Minister is involved and is aware of. He will be writing to the hon. Gentleman in detail about it. No decision has yet been made on Enterprise Ulster, and my hon. Friend the Minister is receiving deputations, having meetings and discussing its future.
I was alarmed to hear the views of the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh on what is happening in planned maintenance, and even more alarmed when I saw one of my hon. Friends nodding his agreement. As for my nodding in agreement with my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield, I should say that I was known as nodding Needham at school. It does not necessarily mean that I agree with him. I shall obviously take this matter up with the chairman of the Housing Executive. I was of the opinion that we may not be able to do as much as was hoped for but I trusted that we would do what we did as well as possible.

Mr. J. Enoch Powell: The Minister has been good enough to place this emphasis on the matter. May I offer a lead? I think that the supervision by the Housing Executive of the execution of contracts is very often lacking in effectiveness.

Mr. Needham: That is certainly a subject that I shall take up with the Housing Executive. I will report to the right hon. Gentleman when I have done so.
On the constituency point of the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh, which ended up not as a constituency point, if it has taken three goes to get his 184 houses changed from gas to coal-fired under the existing maintenance system, one shudders to think that he may be right about any future maintenance system. I think that that is rather a separate and special point. Again, I hope that the hon. Gentleman will not mind if I come back to him on it. I am aware of the problem, as he knows.

Mr. Mallon: My goes have not solved the problem. I would like the Under-Secretary to take action before the fourth go at it and more money is poured down the drain.

Mr. Needham: I am sure that the hon. Gentleman will understand that I am not in favour of pouring money down anybody's drain.

Mr. Bell: Or up the chimney.

Mr. Needham: Or up the chimney. I am grateful to the hon. Gentleman for helping the Front Bench, even with the jokes.
I shall write to the hon. Member for Newry and Armagh about the blind. I am aware of the case to which he referred or from which I believe his interest came. There are other methods by which people can be helped to obtain assistance through the courts, depending on their individual cases. Certainly, it is an issue that I shall consider.
I hope that I have covered the points raised by hon. Members.
Finally, I refer to the comment of my hon. Friend the Member for Macclesfield on rehabilitation versus rebuild.


I am convinced that it is right to rehab, as it is sexily called, where possible, but I should point out that there are cases where it makes much more sense, because of the size of the houses, their condition and the expense that would be incurred in rehabilitation, to knock them down and replace them. I think that my hon. Friend will agree, having visited the Province, as I know he has, and having looked at many of the new housing schemes in Northern Ireland, that we have done a good job in the replanning of layouts and finding additional space for people to live in.
I have got through my first winding-up speech on an appropriation order. Like other right hon. and hon. Members, I am distressed that some of our colleagues from Northern Ireland are not present, but we have had a debate that demonstrates the importance of Northern Ireland affairs and that we cover them carefully and considerately.
I commend the order to the House.

Question put and agreed to.

Resolved,

That the draft Appropriation (Northern Ireland) Order 1986, which was laid before this House on 19th February, be approved.

CHILDREN AND YOUNG PERSONS (AMENDMENT) BILL [MONEY]

Queen's Recommendation having been signified—

Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Children and Young Persons (Amendment) Bill, it is expedient to authorise the payment out of money provided by Parliament of any increase attributable to that Act in the sums payable out of money so provided under any other Act.—[Mr. Whitney.]

WAYS AND MEANS

AIRPORTS BILL

Resolved,
That, for the purposes of any Act resulting from the Airports Bill, it is expedient to authorise the levying of annual charges on airport operators in respect of the expenses of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission in connection with references made to it under that Act.—[Mr. Ancram.]

Housing (Livingston)

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Durant.]

Mr. Robin Cook: I am grateful for the opportunity to raise a matter of serious and growing concern to my constituents—the forward housing programme of Livingston development corporation. On the whole, I do not quarrel with the priorities of the corporation, and usually agree with the judgments that it makes within the resources available to it. My point, for which the Government must take full responsibility, is that its resources are not adequate to do the job that if faces.
There are two separate issues. The first is the amount of capital allocation available to LDC to tackle the upgrading of the existing housing stock. The second is the Government's ban on general needs building by the new towns, including the LDC. The two are linked, as, were that ban to be lifted, the new towns would require an even more generous capital allocation than they need for the upgrading of existing stock. Both cases stand on their own merit, so I shall address myself to them as separate issues.
This debate, and my application for it, were prompted by the reduction in the capital allocation for the LDC in the forthcoming year. For the current year, it received £2–4 million net capital allocation for housing purposes. Next year, it will receive only £1·7 million, which is effectively a reduction of one third in real terms. It is difficult for those of us who know and seek to grapple with the housing problems of Livingston, to understand what possible basis there could be in the reality on the ground for that reduction in the net capital allocation for LDC.
Livingston, by its nature, has a large number of houses that were built in the 1960s, when system building was extremely fashionable among architects. Those houses have proved inappropriate wherever they have been built, but they have proved particularly inappropriate in Livingston, which is on an exposed hillside in Scotland, 500 ft above sea level. Some aspects of the housing stock desperately needs urgent attention if it is to provide acceptable housing into the 21st century, and if it is to stop deteriorating before the 20th century comes to an end.
First, a large number of houses have flat roofs. Unfortunately, in the 1960s, architects forgot that flat roofs do not allow the rainwater to run off. I have constituents who have reported 14 or 15 times that their roofs are leaking. To be fair to the LDC, quite often the tenants have been visited 14 or 15 times, and have had more patches put on the fiat roof above them. That is no solution. The only solution to the problem faced by the tenants and the LDC is to provide the houses with proper pitched roofs. If the rain does not get in through the roof, it gets in through the Bison cladding. The Minister will be familiar with the problems of Bison-built houses, and he will be aware that where such buildings are in an exposed position, as in Livingston, the case is as strong as anywhere else for urgent treatment of that form of building.
My next point concerns the provision of the heating systems in those houses. Unfortunately, many of the houses were built at a time when architects blithely

assumed that energy, and particularly electricity, would be cheap indefinitely. They therefore built houses that were cheap on insulation, and which are now expensive to run.
A number of houses in Livingston are recognised by the DHSS as exceptionally hard to heat houses. The LDC, to its credit, perfectly properly wants to replace the heating systems in those houses and provide heating systems that the tenants can once again afford. That is a matter of concern not only to the tenant but to the landlord as, while the houses are not heated, they deteriorate as a result of the familiar problems of condensation.
In addition to all these problems with the existing housing stock, there is the further quite distinctive issue of the upgrading programme for Knightsridge 4. I will not weary the Minister with the details of that tonight, as he was good enough to meet me and the local councillor, Maureen Ryce, a fortnight ago and we much appreciate the fact that since then he has been able to make a decision approving that upgrading programme.
That upgrading programme alone requires a capital expenditure of £3·6 million spread over two years. Therefore there will be an annual expenditure of £1·8 million. That figure compares to the total net capital allocation for Livingston for the current year of £1·7 million. In other words, that project alone would swallow up the entire net capital allocation. If we add the other expenditure to which I have referred, Livingston requires and can readily absorb a net capital allocation some two or three times the figure that has been offered for the current year.
The Minister could perfectly properly argue that the net capital allocation is not the sole capital resource available to Livingston. The LDC can also apply to capital expenditure the receipts that it obtains from the sale of houses. The fact is, however, that those receipts are on a declining profile. We are over the hump in public sector housing sales. In Livingston in the past year there has been a marked reduction in interest in purchases of corporation houses. That is not surprising, since more than half the tenants in Livingston are on housing benefit and are not in a position to purchase their houses. There is bound to be finite point to the demand for council house sales and we appear to be approaching that point.
It is possible that the Housing (Scotland) Bill, which is currently before the House, will stimulate a fresh wave of applications for purchase, should it complete its passage. That, however, will be a one-off effect. The LDC expects that its receipts from house sales will decline from £2·5 million in the current year to £1·1 million in 1990. That estimate was prepared by a development corporation which takes no view on the rights or wrongs of selling public housing and which has proved itself willing and energetic in marketing the sale of such houses. That corporation nevertheless expects to be able to achieve only a declining revenue from the sale of its houses.
In other words, the LDC is faced with a declining capital revenue from the sale of its housing stock and a declining net capital allocation from the Scottish Office. On that basis, it is impossible for the LDC to tackle the grave housing problems that it has inherited. In the immediate future that means that it does not have enough resources to meet committed expenditure in the coming financial year. In the longer term, it means that some of my constituents will continue to live with flat roofs, with Bison-clad buildings and with heating that is too expensive for them to use, until beyond the year 2000 on the present


resources available to LDC. That is the situation in a housing authority for which the Secretary of State is directly responsible.
It would not require resources beyond the bounds of imagination to tackle the problems at Livinston. The capital programme of the LDC in 1978–79, the last year of the Labour Government, was double the capital programme in the current financial year. Moreover, none of that expenditure was financed by sales of the housing stock.
I do not expect miracles. I do not expect the Under-Secretary of State to be able to return us to those halcyon days and the expenditure of 1978–79. I do not think that he has brought his cheque book with him. However, I ask him to give serious and sympathetic consideration to the representations from LDC and to look at them with a genuinely open mind. The hon. Gentleman has been willing—I appreciate this—to recognise the problems in the Knightsridge 4 area of Livingston. He has been prepared to admit that there is a case for expenditure. I put it to him that having recognised those problems, he must now will the means to tackle them.
I am concerned also about the ban imposed by the Scottish Office on construction of general needs housing in the new towns. That ban was imposed by the Minister's predecessor three years ago. Since then, no general needs housing has been started in Livingston or in any other Scottish new town. The hardship caused by that moratorium has become increasingly evident during those three years.
When I was first elected to the seat of Livingston and went to my surgeries there, I had few, if any, cases of people coming to me who were not able to obtain rehousing. I have to admit that it made a refreshing contrast to my previous constituency in central Edinburgh where such cases were the stock in trade of my surgery. However, over the three years, first a steady trickle and now a steady stream of people have come to my surgeries unable to obtain the housing that they urgently and desperately need. I share that experience with local councillors. Yesterday, West Lothian district council carried a resolution requesting the Scottish Office to lift the moratorium on the construction of general needs housing in Livingston, precisely because of the experience of local councillors in finding an increasing number of constituents coming to them whom they could not assist.
To understand the pressure on the waiting list, it is necessary to remember that Livingston is a new town which has been constructed over the past 20 years. We now have a large number of second generation residents reaching their 20s, getting married and understandably seeking a house in which they can set up their family home. Forty six per cent. of the applicants on the LDC's waiting list are under 25. The houses are just not there for them. The waiting list grew steadily until December 1984 when the LDC decided, perhaps understandably, that it would have to close the waiting list, except for priority cases. Even so, the average waiting time lengthened dramatically during the subsequent 18 months. The average time that must elapse before a first offer can be made exceeds a year. Many people on that waiting list cannot afford to wait a year. One hundred applicants a year involve cases where families have split up, often in desperate circumstances, occasionally in violent circumstances.
Bluntly, LDC is caught between the twin pressures of diminishing housing stock from the sales and an increasing demand from the new generation reaching maturity and seeking a family home of their own. The only way out of those conflicting pressures is a building programme of general needs housing. I am not asking for a massive programme. I am not seeking an enormous new estate. I am asking for LDC to have the flexibility to provide a steady responsible programme of perhaps 200 houses a year.
Some private sector house starts are being carried out in Livingston, and it is welcome, but they do not match the needs of the local community. In the past seven years, the average number of starts in Livingston by the private sector has been 137. It is estimated that we require 350 homes a year. Moreover, the people buying those houses come overwhelmingly from outside the new town. They are attracted by houses in an attractive, modern environment and are welcome to the new town. However, the houses constructed by the private sector do not and cannot meet the needs of the young couples of Livingston who cannot afford to purchase them.
I hope the Minister will agree that I have put my case in a rational, reasoned and dispassionate manner. I ask him in return to give a reasoned and dispassionate response to my case for lifting the moratorium, but I do not want him to give an instant response tonight if it will be no. He will have adequate opportunity to respond. The five district councils representing Scottish new towns have formed a joint forum which has been examining, among other issues, the housing needs of the new towns. The unanimous view of those councils is that the moratorium should be lifted, and they wR11 be placing a report before the Minister within a couple of months.
I hope that when he receives that report, he will reflect on my remarks tonight and will, in the light of the evidence that they and I have given, be willing to consider lifting the moratorium. By definition, a moratorium should be only a temporary pause. I hope the Minister will agree, when he receives the report from the five councils, that the time for lifting the moratorium is long overdue.

The Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Scotland (Mr. Allan Stewart): I am grateful to the hon. Member for Livingston (Mr. Cook) for giving the House an opportunity to discuss the housing responsibilities of the Scottish new towns. Their achievements in housing generally have been rather eclipsed by their well-publicised and well-merited achievements in industrial promotion and development. We are all aware of Livingston's success and its pre-eminence in high-tech development, with companies such as Damon Biotech, NEC, Burr Brown, Shin-Etsu Handotai and many others which have decided to "make it in Livingston."
While the solid achievements of the development corporations in housing have not had the same public focus, their role in housing is important. It is inextricably linked to the successful overall development of the new towns, and the new towns have been alive to the interaction between their social and economic objectives.
As the hon. Gentleman said, Livingston has grown substantially. It is now the largest community in Lothian region, outside Edinburgh. Since its inception, the development corporation has built over 12,000 houses at an historic cost to the public purse of£92 million. The hon.


Gentleman referred to the contribution of private enterprise. That has been an increasing contribution, in Livingston as elsewhere.
The hon. Gentleman dealt at length with the current restrictions on corporation house-building for general rental needs. As he said, the restrictions were imposed by my predecessor in 1983 to stimulate private housing development in the new towns to improve housing choice and social balance. At the same time, the Government encouraged the corporations to introduce positive measures to increase the supply of and demand for low-cost homes for purchase.
Through agreements between the corporations and private builders, a growing amount of relatively low-cost housing for single people—the hon. Gentleman referred in particular to young couples—is now coming on stream. Hon. Members in all parts of the House will welcome, for example, the shared equity schemes that have been introduced in Livingston and elsewhere.
The hon. Gentleman said that corporations might feel that now was the time to reintroduce a limited programme of general needs building by the Scottish newtowns. I emphasise that I would be willing to consider a case based on genuine housing need, and I assure the hon. Gentleman that I shall be examining carefully the corporations' submissions. In relation to Livingston in a submission to my Department the development corporation has made it clear that it sees no need at present for a major general needs programme. I invite the hon. Gentleman to rely on the corporation's own assessment of its housing needs and priorities.
The hon. Gentleman rightly pointed to the importance of the gross allocation figure, which reflects not only the net allocation but also sales to sitting tenants. That is an area where Livingston has been particularly successful. It has sold over 1,700 houses to its tenants. That is evidence of the attractiveness of Livingston as a place to live. Of course, sales of public housing are important not only because of income. They help to foster a sense of pride and permanence in the community. The income has been important to the corporations which have been able to apply it to their rehabilitation programmes, to which the hon. Gentleman referred, and to their special needs programmes. In Livingston, for example, sales over the past six years have financed nearly £17 million of new investment.
I accept that future sales cannot be predicted with certainty, but in Livingston's case we have provided some flexibility by setting a sales receipts target for 1986–87 which is lower than is likely to be achieved in the current year, thus accepting the point made by the hon. Gentleman about the trend of sales.
On the Housing (Scotland) Bill the hon. Gentleman was right to point to the possible significant boost to sales following the relaxation of the cost floor. Hon. Members will recall that, under the current rules, which apply to homes first let after May 1975, if the discount to which a tenant would otherwise be entitled brings the selling price of the house below the outstanding debt on the property, discount is restricted so that the house is sold at the lower of either the outstanding debt or the market value. Clause 3(1) of the Housing (Scotland) Bill brings forward the date after which discount restrictions may apply to 31

December 1978. The general effect is to ensure that tenants of houses first let before 31 December 1978 will benefit from their full discount entitlement.
I am now permitting new town development corporations to operate the revised cost floor in respect of unmodernised houses on a voluntary basis in advance of the Bill's enactment. The impact of the voluntary consent is likely to be considerable. The vast majority of tenants in the 11,600 or more houses built in the five Scottish new towns between 1975 and 1978 will stand to benefit from the voluntary consent in now being able to purchase their homes with the benefit of their full discount entitlement. Livingston alone has some 4,000 houses in that category. In cases where the houses have not been significantly modernised since 1978, the tenants will have the opportunity to benefit straight away from improved sales terms.
I fully expect that the early application of the legislative changes will give an appreciable boost to sales over the next few months. In Livingston's case it will help ensure that the corporation achieves its target to self-finance about 60 per cent. of its gross programme involving £4·2 million for 1986–87, to which the hon. Gentleman referred.
The main components of the corporation's housing programme are the provision of special needs housing and the rehabilitation of rented stock. Relatively little special needs housing was built in Livingston in its early years because the town's youthful population structure meant that elderly and disabled groups were under-represented in the town.
However, the corporation has recognised that, as the population structure ages, the demand for specially adapted housing will increase. The hon. Gentleman will know that the corporation let the first of its contracts for wheelchair-adapted houses in 1984, in three areas of the town, and a further scheme for 31 special needs houses is due for completion in August 1987.
Improvements to rental stock, to which the hon. Member for Livingston has referred, comprised the major part of Livingston's housing programme. Over the past four years—I must emphasise this to the House—nearly £12 million has been invested in capital repairs and rehabilitation. About £3·8 million will be spent in the coming year.
The hon. Gentleman rightly pointed to the fact that the need for resources for modernisation is related to the age of the housing stock. Some 64 per cent. of Livingston's housing stock has been built since 1970. That is a high figure compared with the local authority sector, so the stock has suffered relatively little of the obsolescence affecting most housing authorities.
In 1983–84, the latest year for which figures are available, the allocation was £384 per house in Livingston, compared with £353 per local authority house in Scotland. Those figures put Livingston's needs into perspective. I recognise that there are problems and areas that could be improved. Schemes have been proposed for those areas. The resources allocated in recent years have enabled the development corporation to carry through a substantial programme of work.
Since 1982, more than 1,000 houses have been modernised; 7,700 have been insulated; 5,600 houses have had new fixtures and fittings and more than 3,000 houses have had obsolescent heating systems replaced. I agree with the hon. Gentleman that the pace of repairs has


been rapid. The resources available have enabled large-scale schemes to be carried out, which leaves less to be done in the future.
The hon. Gentleman will know that my Department approved last year a major house remodelling and refurbishment project in the Craigshill area of Livingston. That involved 119 houses and cost more than £1·8 million. Last week I gave approval in principle—the hon. Gentleman has referred to this scheme—to the physical remodelling of 427 houses in the Knightsridge area. That project will cost £3·2 million. I was grateful to the hon. Gentleman, and to the local councillor, for coming to see me to detail their concern about Knightsridge. I wish the tenants, who have been very involved in the scheme, every success.
These substantial projects are being funded from the gross allocation made to Livingston development corporation. Against this background, I must say to the

hon. Gentleman that the suggestion that resources are niggardly—against a background of public expenditure restraint—does seem wide of the mark.
For 1986–87, the provisional gross allocation of £4·2 million for new investment will allow for new special needs housing and for the modernisation of about 2,500 units of Livingston's rental stock. Of course, there may be additional receipts as a result of the provisions of the Housing (Scotland) Bill.
Resources are limited and I know that the corporation would have liked more, but I hope that the House will agree that Livingston development corporation is getting a fair share of the available resources for public expenditure on housing in Scotland.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-four minutes past Eleven o'clock.